Love is?

"Today you are beautiful and young and think the world of yourself. Today there are many men who vie for you and give you attention. A day will come when you are no longer as young and as desirable. You will remember me then"
             - Someone told me this, few years ago. Some one who claimed to be madly in love with me. A love bordering on obsession.

He said this, because I could not love him back. In-spite of everything which happened between us.
I could not love him back, cos my heart dint flutter whenever I thought of him. I never anticipated any of my meetings with him, with the trepidation of a lover. I don't remember laughing much in his presence, for that matter I cant really recall any conversations (apart from the ugly ones, which too have faded off like a dash of kohl) we had, which made any difference.

I never gave him the smile which I have reserved for someone else.

Maybe I was always elsewhere in his presence, maybe nothing he said, ever registered.
Maybe the body betrays you and makes you believe in strange fictions, but the heart is the purest. It knows what it wants, and I always knew the truth about my own heart.

And yes, I don't remember him for anything now, but for this one statement. Which had made me smile and recoil within, at the same time.

Smile at the futility of his attempts to make me love him back, like an angry sullen child. Did he think that images of my fading youth and lack of men around me, will make me cling to him for love, which never existed? Or did he just want to hurt me?

I recoiled cos there I saw yet another human, who had numerous complexes of his own, maligning the name of love.
Maybe, love is meant to be maligned, like a kept, or a mistress.
To be used loosely, to satisfy one's ego.
To be thrown away when it no longer provides one with an accentuated notion of oneself.

Love is..not love!

I am astonished by some females I meet, by the conversations I hear.

I go to this dance class and there is this very young woman who teaches us
She is separated from her husband and stays alone

There are other married women with kids who come there and some of them get very pally with her and act as if they care the world for her

There is this woman who learns dance/aerobics and her 11 year old son also learns dance there.

So today, she was there and as usual was fawning over the teacher as to how thin she is and that she should eat on time.
It was the teacher's birthday on 27th July and this woman's son's birthday too. So she had sent some cake to her

The woman - "Did you have the cake I sent you"
Teacher - "No dear. I have been so busy. I dint get time to eat since yesterday"

This woman catches the teacher by waist and takes her along to the kitchen saying "You must eat. This is really bad. Please taste at least"

They get the cake outside and she asks me and other girls to taste. We take a bit.

Now the other woman who had sent the cake says "Do you know this cake is for 1200. How much sweet chariot charges! But lovely cake no?"

I stop and cant help but star at her! Where do such people come from? Where do they learn their manners from?

She feels as if she has been blown away..up in the air
Like an un-tethered kite, she flies up and up
No shackles to pull down, none to stop the ascent

The relationships, the drama, the love, the hatred
All are but a facade, which keeps going for life
Seeking your own self, is the ultimate aim
Seeking imageries of what you lost or never had

They say there is no place like home
But she makes a home of wherever she goes

If at the airport, reading a book and sipping coffee is bliss, thats home to her
If a kid flays arms and runs to her, just for a hug..that's home to her
Watching a movie with some tea and popcorn, gives her a home

Home is where the heart can find a moment's rest, and parched soul is rejuvenated
Home is where she chooses it to be!

She begins, where your comprehension ends

He loves her in strange ways..
Strange is the only way she can be loved

Not like a woman ,
Not like a beloved, or a sweet sister or a mother

Perhaps like an apparition

Let others have a life of love
a life of celebration
But you have pined and settled for her
So you have her to bear

He thinks she has the secrets, of his happiness
She has the secrets of oceans and rains within her

She needs subjugation

If you can not overpower her,
You do not exist outside of her

Accept and surrender
That's the only way things work with her

Cos she knows,
She is not alone in her loneliness,
she is the celebration

And she believes
She begins, where your comprehension ends

And maybe , she will set your soul free..someday


Inspired by lines from Pablo Neruda's poem

I love her as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul ~ Pablo Neruda

Forgetting is remembering

I have been practicing yoga off-late.

It takes a bit of me, outside of me, each time I do it.

Apart from all the difficult postures, and my aching body parts, there is one specific moment which scares me the most.

Its the shav-aasan(lie like a dead)

I have always been the one pretty sure of what I think and feel, but sometimes we see new things which shakes our perception about our own self.

So in this particular posture, all that one is supposed to do is lie down like a dead person, on your back and just relax.

The instructor keeps asking us to regulate our thought process.

He begins with "Concentrate on your body parts and observer them as a 3rd person"

Though I have a very wandering mind, I force myself to recall how my feet and toenails look like.

I try to think of my nail polish color and that sort of blocks away other thoughts and brings my meandering thoughts to a concentric point.

And finally he says, "Now stop all your thoughts and just forget"

That's the point when all thoughts come rushing to me
From the maid who is about to come in the morning..to colleagues..to work...every significant and insignificant in my life comes alive in my mind all together.

Like a jumbled up movie scene with grotesque sound track.

I am reminded of every hurtful thing said, any harshness I endured, all hurt and all pain hit like a barrage

It could be a way with yoga..maybe it tries to bring all of it to surface and then eliminate it all(can it ever??!!)

Like catharsis

I dont know, not sure of that feeling, but that's the point in yoga I wish him to end it fast.
I want to scream and tell him I got to go..am getting late for work..anything to run away

You said..forget the whole thing
And that's what I will always remember

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

udate pairon ke tale jab behti hai jameen
Mud ke hamen koi manjil dekhi hi nahin
( Roads glide past my flying feet,
I never looked back at any milestone of my life)

But this one road, I can give anything to walk them again..to relive those days and months and years

Someone shared a picture of my institute on FB today (the one above)

Oh! how my heart tugs along that pathway, as if the wind blowing there craves out my heart and pulls it along..on those dreams-laden streets

It shocks me how I wish for what has been and never again will be
Are we all such puppets to our past?

How I want to be there again, the walks, the laughter, the insane talks

My my...the follies of youth and the vagaries of heart..
Anything to do it one more time

Those were my golden days...my, mine, for me

I can picture myself sitting near the hostel fence, with a cup of tea, dreams in eyes, song on lips

The small room which gave birth to the three of us who shared that room, birth to maddening laughter within us and boy talks, birth to unknown facets of friendship, love and vodka

As I lay there in the middle, feigning interest in "Fountainhead", while the two of you chatted about boys in our class, and tried desperately to make me laugh

I have trodden those paths many a time, so much that smell of yellow grass still feels fresh on my skin right now