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.