The Itch

The day inched towards closure.A closure that demanded a certain sense of privacy and she lay wrapped up in her quilt,the newspaper crumpled under her pillow,a vogue issue at her feet,a lip gloss that served as a bookmark to the glamorous magazine,the Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath) on the table across her bed,a tap dripping in the bathroom across the room.Sleep seemed to be a stranger in a distant land dressed in a hideously colorful attire walking away from the horizon in a manner that can be at least be described as drunkenly humorous.With her mind on the verge of a new idea and her pupils sufficiently dilated, she sat up straight,so straight that her spine was a bit taken aback by the histrionic movement.Nothingness enchanted a new melody in her..something that sprung alive after being suffocated for long enough.This was the peak after which there would be none.Like the graph she'd studied in a physics class.That was long ago.Living alone now in hilarious nostalgia was damned bliss.There couldn't have been anything better she sometimes thought.It couldn't have gotten worse she thought the rest of the time.

The day before she'd been to the library and there she saw him.Straightforwardly dressed and a man of few words.He didn't ask many questions and he stooped a little when he talked to the staff.He'd just issued the book "the trial-Franz Kafka" Who read stuff like that she thought.She wondered if he was like the lot that lived alone and ate and washed out of the same sink or named a rat that entered into the room instead of driving it away or killing it (the non grotesque option would be preferred of course) She then glanced at his key chain which had Liverpool engraved on it.Would he go home and pour himself a mug of beer and swallow it along with a cheap football game.She saw that he too was glancing at her black nail paint and skull shaped ring that hung loosely over her finger.She wondered if he thought she'd go home and watch Buffy reruns or even worse one pathetic Charmed episode.
"I'm over that,"she whispered coarsely.
"Excuse me?" His eyes widened and she could see a tinge of gray in the them.
"Your eyes are gray"
"ohhhkay"

Sleep was now a stranger who began to know her and talk to her.It still wasn't enough to get her to bed.She opened her fridge and ransacked different containers until she found a flaccid one that contained chicken pasta that she'd packed after lunch at her usual restaurant.Heated it for 15 minutes on a sickly blue yellow gas flame that irritated her and made her think of her wicked past experimenting with food. Experimenting with food at the cost of starvation deaths in the country.A delicious meal puked out in the sink.Bulimia was the beast she fed well and lived with for now.Well we all are hypocrites aren't we.The women and men alike.Men with American playboy issues hidden under mattresses and women wearing red sindoor along with red lingerie. The world was hellishly confused about minor stuff.So was she.And a 23 year old had the basic right to be confused about investments,about her future,about her intrinsic desires and about the world around her.Basic rights..we are born with them like we are with intestines or an arse.

He arose from the fragments of her imagination.Fragments that eventually exploded and the explosive residue that stuck to his feet.The world ended at her feet.The belief stemmed from the innards of her soul.The core was the untouched delicacy.Like a Lindt chocolate that would soon go down the drain and would follow the ugliest routes to reach its final resting place..more like the eternal rotting place.We never think of all that when we bury people.
"I noticed you had gray eyes"
"well...i was born with them"

Old journal entries made public --part one..

October 30th 2007
Tuesday,
My tongue is ticklish.I've relished a serving of spicy gossip and am ready for more.Hayho.
We're morphing into superbitches -- quote D. I have very unusual guests to entertain tonight- meet convenience and plan.And you too!!Come lets pour ourselves a glass of wine. Join me, lets raise a toast to my sarcasm and wit,my antidepressants and my pen and paper.Resurrection never felt this powerful.Enjoy the music,at least it'll keep you company if nothing else.
(D= Dyuti Mishra honey do you remember our gossip girl inspired girls night out? the plan was wonderfully charted out,hilariously animated and never followed through..)

3rd November 2007 Saturday
Steps have been carefully taken,fake smiles carefully pasted,yet the gestures not really perfected.Reminds me of a wobbly wriggly worm-I loved pronouncing such weird alliterations as a kid.I hated spellings though,I still do.
Anyway the point being,it took me a lame century to figure out where I stand and having figured it out I couldn't position myself there quite satisfactorily.

15th December 2007 I don't know what day it is..I don't care,
Out cold for too long.
In bed shrinking,disappearing,calling the worse shots ever,hoping to get my arse moving around.Disappointing.
I began counting my so called achievements on my fingers and i turned up with a closed fist..
sigh,,

12th April 2007
for the upcoming vacation..
1.Get back to writing
2.Exercise
3.Read fucked up crazy books
4.Solve the daily sudoku
5.Rent weird movies
6.Make cards
7.Bake a cake
8.Reinvent your wardrobe
9.Help depressed kids on myspace
10.Collect interesting newspaper clippings
11.Try solving crosswords
12.Get drunk with D
13.Meet old school friends (whose existence was totally forgotten about by me)
14.Be good
15.Shop
16.Clean
17.Cook
18.Plan for a school reunion (wtf?)

you won't be going home tonight..

Someday
after an amazingly bad day
You wouldn't be walking home
There would be night
There would be a bar
There would be smoke
There would be strangers
With glances,drinks and sneers.
There would be your apartment
bills to be paid tugging at your door
lying across the floor
back on the streets
to your left
There would be a takeaway counter
An ATM to your right
A STD booth further down the lane
if your mobile batteries are dead tonight
A theater across the street
A restaurant that serves scrumptious meat...
Yeah whatever,
You aren't going home tonight.

The Oscar WIlde theory...

Yes I have been in love with the guy ever since i picked up "The picture of Dorian Gray" or "portrait" is it? anyway I personally love the guy.His on the spot exceptionally renowned wit and sarcasm shook the world.Shook London..even better.And yet after all the glamor and fame and exquisiteness of his verse and quote and his life and his being..he died a lonely homosexual. Tragic and heart breaking for someone who had it all,the art of satire and the hearts of young men.I don't want to be like that writes Tarun Tejpal in the alchemy of desire.Living a life of exile and dying a lonely death.Well if it scares Tarun Tejpal then it scares us.It scares me and whenever i think of fame and satire and wit and charm I think of lonely homosexuals dying lonely deaths.Being sarcastic isn't a fad anymore and being a homosexual never was.But Oscar Wilde still has fans the world over nevertheless his tragic life has gotten him a tad bit more popularity.Oscar Wilde quotes are immortal and charming as ever.I use them sometimes and I'm sure they suit more than one occasion and more than a specific group of people.I really do not realize the purpose of this post and as senseless as it sounds i am not a homosexual.I just find it arcane when i think of Oscar Wilde and his life and the countless men he fucked.I am not against homosexuality either.Glamor and fame might have seen better endings and the art of satire is certainly not as sinful as it sounds.All i have is a stupid rhyme that goes as live a life of reckless fame and later maybe die of shame.And there is no one really left to blame.
signed...
drunkard.
Oscar Wilde quotes can be used on 1. angry parents
2.the frustrated lot of people
3. drunk people
4. friends you like
5. friends you don't like
6. people with bipolar disorders
7. a teacher about to grade your project.
Use at your own risk.

june 8th

I am a writer who doesn't write.Today i was supposed to weigh my options and decide for the very best.I wasn't supposed to recline in the obviousness of it all which i eventually ended up doing.It is difficult to indulge in specificity when you basically have nothing to do.

Two days ago i turned 20.I could turn 30 tomorrow and things could still be the same.Maybe they wouldn't.Maybe they would.
Twenty somethings in vain..the punch line stays the same.
What you get here you don't get anywhere else.

chapter one: the way it all began

Life dwindled strangely on the outskirts of a dream.The horizon with held the idiocy of hope and promises.Time ticked away.The flowers dried,wrinkled and miserable-
fell off wretchedly like they were destined to do so.A wave of sympathy tore her doors down.They creaked open her windows and cracked open the floors.The crunchiness of the moment was savoured.However her belongings lay untouched.The vase,the chair,the book,the pen,the painting,the half eaten sandwich and the untouched cup of coffee now grown cold.The photographs lay splattered on the floor.Memory sucked the life out of them.They faded away to blacks and whites of nothing significant.Love wandered in and out of the wooden doors and the peach coloured walls like a burglar eyeing his own belongings with utmost avarice and then it contemptuously dissolved into one of the cracks in the floor below.
All was still now and she was on the chair.Life sat still for a moment as she held her breath,glanced over..a moment's notice and then carried on as she grasped for it.The moment had passed.She feared not knowing what to do like never before.

This time the fear gripped her knees feeling the softness of their shaken surface. This was the furthermost she had ever been and couldn't walk any further.The city lights dawned on her like they never had before.Shunted off wonderful experiences regarding life..nothing ever filled her book of life and reality.Random thoughts however flooded even her peach coloured walls.This was a week before she died.

The book of life-empty

The book of thoughts-flooded with even the most minuscule least important insignificant detail.

She took none with her.They stayed under her bed for years to come.One of the workers found it during the renovations.He gave the empty book to his 12 year old delight who filled the first half of the book with landscapes,still life,abstract art and beautiful portraits.The later half of the book however contained nudes.Some of them were touching each other's breasts,some of them were crying,some of them were pressing their thighs against each other and some of them just stared at you from the corner of the page.

The books of thoughts made it to a publisher who left it lying on a pile of unread books.Later that night it poured and the rain slashed hard on the roof tops and the wind ravaged that part of the city.The pile of unread books remained unread after the publisher's head was found smashed against the windshield of his beloved car in the wee hours of the morning.Cracked open,just like the floor of her house.

She sat still on the bed.There was a gentle knock on the door.She would have liked to believe that it was the wind.The knocks grew louder.A possibility-the wind could have grown wilder harnessing essential bouts of energy from mother nature. The thought of mother nature would sound comforting to her as she held strange looking,over sized red lingerie in her hand.They came out of her husband's closet. Over sized red lingerie.Red for rage,red for passion clenched tightly in her fists. The knocks grew louder.She was a small woman with tiny tits and bony hands,veins sticking out of them.When she looked down she appeared tinier. Her husband always bent over to kiss her..could that be one of the reasons,she asked herself.

She finally opened the door.Grief had taken a toll on her.Her eyes were sullen,she wore no make up and she looked old.A man wanted to clarify some of the details of the funeral which was to be held day after.Before he left his face flushed with sympathy and he offered her his condolences. "I am sorry for your loss."

She looked at him.At his oblong face and his hazel eyes clouded with smoke.Her face broke out into a smile for the first time in two days."So am I," she replied. There was something terribly disturbing in her smile.A hint of insanity he figured. The awkward moment passed.He turned to leave.The red lingerie lay safely under the pillow of her bed.

A cloud passed across the sky as she lay on the soft green grass.A confused 12 year old.The garden looked greener than ever.Flowers of every species bloomed with a certain pride.The thought bubble was drenched with thoughts,it burst open unable to sustain the congestion,chaos and confusion.The wind blew her thoughts away to a safer place..this she assumed.As a child she'd be caught in two worlds distinctly apart and varied.Papa-an ordinary carpenter,mama a high profile lawyer.She floated in between hammers,screws and closing arguments.Papa carried his tool box and mama carried important files.Papa in his worn out Levi's and half buttoned shirt,mama in her sophisticated suits and her classic pumps. Sometimes they fought because they couldn't get along.

Those were humble beginnings and then there were none.

chapt 2 : (the fucking details..to be contd)

She took to the streets sometimes,callously wandering around the unfamiliar place trying to get her hands on something worthwhile.However she failed to discover that worthwhile things aren't discovered on the streets.They are found in garages and the corners of a room.I could afford to be drunk tonight she thought..or stay sane and attend a book club meet.I could be social tonight she thought as she passed by a couple holding hands.I could be...she paused, alone tonight.

Some feasible thought.Some feasible junk.Her dress was deliriously pink and her bag a pearly white.The girl,a dream and the streets.The sky leaked of guilt as it turned a shade darker.The scene was set and the story..missed.It lay in one of her fancy drawers smelling of camphor.The ones at the top were found,the ones at the bottom lay hidden inside.

The self gained importance like it never had before.The self was somewhat confusing and wouldn't be compromised.When they found her,her soft skin submerged under the soapy water splattered with her half wet hair they must have figured out the importance of "the self " too.Yes...they figured out the importance of the self right there kneeling among the blue bloodied tiles.Her melancholic grey eyes wide open,tilted upwards like they waited for a part of heaven to tear down the roof of her lonely apartment.Interestingly the cut wrist lay outside the icy blue bath tub.A peculiar lavender essence haunted the place.

After the first cut was made she looked at the tiles.She seemed to actually notice them for the very first time.They were the same color as the tub,a black line dividing each of them perfectly and a bent golden flower with its calyx and corolla above the black line and the stalk along with leaves below it.The flower shone,the black line was barely visible,her toe twitched,the blood dripped.All was still.The sunlight beautifully cast itself on the delicately carved soap case.Perfection and disaster patched up after a broken marriage.Silence dissolved itself in the lather and later drained out of the sink when the very first sounds of the sirens were heard.

She stood alone at the edge of the staircase.Below the monster twisted and twirled until it finally reached the marble floor.The miserable marble spread over 300 sq cm of its equally miserable surface.He loved her best when she stood that way.

chapter 3. the others

Now 'the widow' and life took sharp turns.This time she walked --on gravel,on sand,stones and grass.Wide eyed and stupid she thought as she managed her bank accounts and taxes independently.Loneliness turned out to be surprisingly comfortable.As an art teacher her salary was modest,satisfactory and sufficient.She didn't need much anyway.She did keep a few of her husband's favourite books,manuscripts,his black suit and the strange oversized lingerie that she dug out of his closet a day after his death.The rest was gone,lost or burnt in the sink.An old unread yellowed manuscript caught her attention.It read 'Attempts to normalize her..'

13 now and suffering the aftermath of her parent's divorce.She lived with her mom and visited her dad on weekends.Her passion for art took a fierce form.Sometimes she'd dream of dissolving herself into a perfect colour and splattering her innards on a fresh crisp canvas.The grotesqueness of it somehow calmed her.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The table is littered with secrets and dinner is eaten in atrocious silence.Smiles and pleasures.Doesn't he know? She thinks.Does she know?.He thinks.Delicate leaves
roll down the pale blue candle stand.Mrs. Newman fixes her hair.Jenny runs a hand
over her lips as she peers into her pocket mirror.Her lipstick is intact.Perfect she thinks as she slips the mirror into her purse again.Or is it? Yes there is a lot of thinking going on.We have quite a lavish dinner here that boasts of authentic spicy kebabs and strawberries dipped in warm chocolate sauce.We also have a specially recommended sea food menu that boasts of obnoxious flamboyance.The children giggle. The secrets are not for them.Pretty eyes carry out a conversation.No lies,no secrets..secrets if present are spilled out.Hey i got the cherry.I have more chocolate sauce on my dessert.I wore some of my mother's lipstick when she wasn't looking..she still isn't looking..do I look pretty? Look..new earrings. Look at this scar,my darn cat scratched me here.The truth and nothing more.The dinner goes on. The grown up conversations are yet to start.The champagne has been served.The children hurriedly slurp their sodas.They spot the garden.Can we go play? Umm..okay but come back soon.
Jenny checks her lipstick again.Still intact although there is a tinge of it on her champagne glass.A classic Revlon burgundy gifted to her on her last birthday by Bob.A relief from the usual heart shaped chocolates and roses that die the next day..men finally learn.But Bob is thinking of another color- heart wrenching crimson red.Blood red lips and nails that dug into him a week ago.Bob doesn't look at Jenny although she does glance at him from time to time.
Nina and Vish - the hosts.The Mehta's.The sophisticated lot.She a lawyer and he a geneticist. She earning twice as more and he working thrice as hard and studying nonetheless.
Charu and Manav the awkward teens - they grab their soda glasses and go to another room to watch Tv.Charu bespectacled,Manav with braces.They are excruciatingly bored.At 15 and 16 girls and boys, aware that they are indeed girls and boys don't make a great conversation.He was aware that she had monthly menstrual cycles and she was aware that he had a dick.Puberty and awareness..do they mix?
Well bananas,walnuts and chocolate chips do! that was Nina's special dessert.Manav helped his mom make it.But at 15 and 16 some teens do mix..the social lot of them,mix and blend excruciatingly well. Like vanilla and chocolate.The distinctness of the flavor and the insignificance of the individual ingredients.But awkwardness doesn't mix.It regains its individual identity.An identity that could be chopped up into a million pieces and still be retained in each of them.
We return to the dinner table-the delicate china,the aesthetic forks,the champagne glasses and a Russian salad.A full fledged conversation finally came to life like a fetus that pushed its way out of the womb.Life - conversation, conversation -- life.
Writer rule number one-Let your characters have the basic right of deciding who they are and what they want.They could have a dream or want a car.
The conversation now roared through the rust colored walls of the room.The talk was about philosophy.The philosophy of life..the award would go to the person who talked better crap and for a substantially longer period of time.The conversation initially began with politics.Jenny's lips twitched and Nina blinked and rolled her eyes more than twice (the usual rate.) Bob was lost in thought.Red was the thought.Crimson red..the lips,the nails,the lace.

miss artsy

paint my words red
paint my heart blue
colour my world
colour my soul
my life an abstract art
splash me over and over
each time with a different hue
you hope to make sense of me
when you hang me on your wall
i will be there for all to see
before i break and fall..

and what did he ever know of losing?
he tied his shoelaces
and drank the milk without spilling it on the floor
and put a star shaped cookie in his pocket
maybe he might have lost
a crayon sometime
and known about it
when he was about to color his heart
red
the one he drew on a lined page
given to him by his mother
from a diary she used
to keep her accounts in
to keep him busy
shoo him away
an arty pre occupation
hours of relief
to do things she liked
like paint her nails
maybe red
he still searches for the red crayon
underneath sofa's and in between sheets
troubles him,it does
to see an empty space
in the crayon box
something missing
amongst the blue's and the green's and the black's
losing isn't easy
when you want something
in a moment more than you could imagine
it not being there
could bother you,affect you..
more than you could imagine
it starts with a crayon
something that stands 6 cm tall
that sickly pastel
losing isn't great
but at the end of the day
the heart is painted
green....
and his mother's nails
red...
it looks more beautiful than ever
imagined.

you've watched me all afternoon

you’ve watched me paint my nails,half black,half pink an orange line slashed diagonally over..graphic,weird,colourful
you’ve watched me fall in love and wake up the next day as if nothing happened..you’ve watched me sit on the edge,looking below,one step closer to falling...
you’ve watched me keep my devilish innocence in my purse like money wondering if they were the same
you’ve watched me cough out my pride and inhale insecurity
you’ve watched me all afternoon,,i’ve watched you too
ive watched you dig out the monsters i buried last night
i watched you bring them to life
a host,an exhibitionist...you have a lovely house draped in an ugly heart,,i wish id stay here all day
and id burn our memories in the kitchen sink...





the pores on your skin have grown deeper
the lines on your forehead thicker,,like maps and routes
do you think of me often??

today (poetic expressions)

today i wait
for a rumor to take its toll
for love to grown sour
for my pages to fill soon
for a hideous monster to disappear

today i dream
of you, in all your wretchedness
of hearts that would bear a terrible burden
of rooms id never enter

today i sing
a song that tickles my tongue
a wish that makes it all end

today i decipher
your to-do lists
your post-it notes
these codes
and an obscure truth

today i drink
from a forgotten bottle of wine
a life i thought was mine

today i love
the candle light fire
the wind that strokes my hair
the night that grows cold
the room where i grow old

today i write
verbs that don't make sense
adjectives that spark fears
nouns that you don't hear

today i bear witness
to me..
my life..
my soul...
my selfishness..
my flawed heart..
everything i did..
have done..
will ever do..