The alphabetical stir..

Y is for youth..when all insanity and craziness can be forgiven and the future still holds hope and hope still holds a future.When we still stand our ground on a chimerical existence..and live through it.

They are young again, back at that moment in life when someone else's body is a path that might be taken, with no chance of return.
-Anne Enright 'The Gathering'

P is for pain and we haven't a clue..We basically don't, and yet they are of different kinds and they can be categorized and sub categorized further and further until there is nothing left.
This is the one feel where standards of comparison don't work and even if they do they can't be trusted to be right enough,justified enough or tolerant enough.But pain does shape you.Pain is the essence of all human beauty,it is the survival kit we all carry with much elegance.It distracts quality.

And even then, it seems we always feel pain for the wrong thing
- Anne Enright 'The Gathering'

W is for waiting after having packed your bags..and the promise it brings along for a better life, an adventure, an untoward extraordinary journey mingled with the anticipation of an astounding discovery.

C is for the closet and the things that define you.
Fancy scarves,photos of your sweetheart,travelogues,an extra pair of glasses,lost keys bundled under an army of clothes,all colors- the blacks,the blues and the magnolias,passport and visas,your grandmother's bracelet that she gave you because she thought being old came minus the ornate and fanciful stuff and you wouldn't convince her otherwise,eyelash curlers and mascara's and concealers - everything that possibly made you forget that you were the same girl from school,a phonebook that contains birthdays,addresses and numbers of people you never call or talk to anymore- the ones you wish to never run into the streets anymore because then you'd get stuck talking to them..hey what's life if you get stuck up at one place? a beautiful trench coat - a Christmas present from your mom that you failed to acknowledge,wedges you wore to your first date after which you tossed them aside because things didn't work out the way you wanted them to,old marksheets that somehow highlighted your smartness but never your completeness and you wondered why you felt so empty when you sat down alone at your desk with a cup of tea....all truly yours

D is for detail..and everything you thought you'd missed.

H is for a half.Half a thought.Half a wish.

F is for fascination and at some point in our lives we always tend to overgrow it.

Q is for quality that you find easy to decipher and Q is for quantity that a few lucky ones assimilate.Its a life long battle between the two.

H is for home - a much needed fuel.

O is for an old woman and she sleeps on her back never on her sides..so close to death.

W is for the writer who is just an eccentric actually.He eats boiled eggs for dinner.He can flush his hard earned dignity down the sink with much ease.

R is for respect and respect respect respect respect what you've got.

B is for bubbles that you sometimes tend to blow in your cup of tea.

to be contd..

They don't laugh anymore when you fall..

I think in the course of our long jaded lives we hit that one particular stone..'The one' that is either kind enough to let you get away with just a fall or a few minor bruises or the one that is remorseless enough to never let you back up again..the one that buries you under forever.

The sky swelled up in an early morning despondent teal announcing the arrival of the monsoons. Savor the melancholic thought and detail.
Present day genre of deranged,maniacal bus drivers sped along the empty streets toying around with their beloved mechanical pets.Beware : the delayed brake syndrome is high and is spreading around feverishly throughout the country..it cherishes the true Indian spirit like nothing else.
Just when I thought he'd hit the pavement or run over that old woman or flipped inside out or driven right into the entrails of another of vehicle, worse masticated a few slum dwellers sleeping on the road sides outside their shacks - he stopped..just in time.Brilliant.

We are just a step away from being really bad drivers and one behind licensed streetwise daredevils.

Then it happened..in the midst of an empty street stood an array of vehicles predicting a possible traffic jam.A traffic jam at 7 in the morning..Jesus.
Damn I should have walked, I would have reached faster..you know how people always say that? I believe 80% of them think that too.
But that's not really true. If you act brave enough and really get down to doing it (ie stepping out of your respective vehicles and on to the road)..well then that's precisely the time the chaos starts clearing out and your not high flown anymore (are you?) infact you are plain stupid standing right in the middle of the street, your feet tightening underneath the classic burgundy leather, the 100 decibel plus racket trumpeting right through your sensitive ear lobe leaving you sore and ofcourse very very embarrassed.

Where was I ? Oh yes - the traffic jam.
The cause: an accident.
The cost: perhaps a life and a half.
His body lay sprawled on the streets..Da Vinci's Vitruvian man.Beside him lay his bag and the contents of it splattered all over the noticeably wet ground - a packet of milk (now diffused and half empty), bread and The Indian Express.Homespun and simple,its amazing how important a role the contents of your bag play in defining you.I might have been wrong there but then again that wasn't the point.He would be missed nonetheless and that's why the cost of an accident always comes at the cost of a life and a half.
His beige pants bore the marks of a probable truck tyre while the cuffs of his grey striped shirt stained blood red.
It was just another day afterall and he was just out to get breakfast.

There wasn't an ambulance anywhere in sight, just a few cops here and there patrolling traffic. Maybe there was one on the way.
'D' is for death and you don't have to go through it to write about it.
The alphabetical stir continues.
Maybe he didn't die..maybe they saved him in the nick of time.

Gone are the days when tripping on a banana skin was considered funny.Whoever called that humor? Fucking sadists.
The fall is for real.