Days of our lives..

"I'm dying," she must have whispered into his shapely and well proportioned ear on a rainy day (when the lower part of the window fogged up and the upper part of it was mist laden and sublime) or on a not so rainy day (when the sun stood on the horizon inches away from sinking into it,weary,after having witnessed rumblings of an entire day beneath him.Yes it was a 'him' because he only felt tired in the evenings and called it a day.)
And then their lives must have progressively shattered there on.I stood among the remanants of what must have been a warm and inviting abode.From where I stood I could hear the distinct hum of the church choir.The dying tree and the dying house sucked the energy out of each other.They formed a strange sombre pair.

If your life was a newspaper what would the headlines be?

Someone died.The weather blew up in your face.Sordid.The party scene next door got uglier.A crash and then glass fell apart..someone stepped on it maybe or worse fell on it.They'd found a stash of dope stuffed away in his pockets.He was going to die anyway.Trains go off tracks.The swine flu masquerade party might be over but people are still dying.Only that now there is no fuss about it.Only one teeny weeny question that splits open every now and then.What if? What if the flu gets me? What if the flu gets my family? My son at school? My man at work? What if's are such diggers.They could ascertain a variety of catastrophic events that run along the longest coast of the sea.Once they get to the coast they start drifting into the sea.Deeper and deeper in between bouts of nauseatingly salty water.
With that said I'd say some people do not realize how lucky they are. I should be generous enough not to name them.I just wish they knew.I sometimes wish I knew too.How lucky I was
- to have a heart beating inside me,to be able to walk and stand my ground, to be whatever I want.And yet these things, these majestic essentials are overshadowed by those vexing details of daily life.I just wish we all knew.
But we don't,do we? And it takes fleeting images of misfortunates sleeping on roadsides or the failing health of someone very old even worse someone younger to bring us one step closer to reality.A reality that is overpriced,taxed and levied by routine- most ordinary and most obvious.

Something I'd read over and over..

Summer in a Small Town

by Linda Gregg

When the men leave me,
they leave me in a beautiful place.
It is always late summer.
When I think of them now,
I think of the place.
And being happy alone afterwards.
This time it's Clinton, New York.
I swim in the public pool
at six when the other people
have gone home.
The sky is gray, the air is hot.
I walk back across the mown lawn
loving the smell and the houses
so completely it leaves my heart empty.

Unverified Junk..

Long time. I am in the running to officially breaking down this september owing to outrageous coffee consumption,terribly unstable nerves and loads of unverfied junk that i managed to ace up my sleeve.

So I repeat slipping issues of health mags under my pile of clothes isn't going to make me adapt to a healthier lifestyle...Are you listening mom?

The wretch called up my mum to tell her I was sleeping all day..wretch wretch wretch..What is the point in staying away from home if your not going to be sleeping all day?

Least to say the wretch cannot dismantle my vitriolic spirits that are up and running high courtesy high caffine content in my system.

Days do not comprise of much.Either they are spent running around the city or doing nothing at all.And when I say nothing at all I mean nothing at all..the highlight of the day being -- dousing a cockroach in harpic..

I could be spotted at a coffee shop pretending to read a book or write OR a restuarant having lunch by myself or complete strangers.Complete strangers come into the picture when the craving for good food at a popular place overlooks the fact that you have absolutely zilch company to share the delight with.I repeat I do not like running errands for people until I am getting paid for it and especially the older lot of them who get on my nerves.Hence I would not be found at my other stay in from 10 to 1 in the mornings.

You could add working for the UN on my schizo wishlist.

This calls for beefing up my mothballed state of affairs.

The old,the living and the dying..

After watching the two feet long reptilian wonder journey all the way from a shelf containing some very aesthetic tableware to the back of a Turner painting I reverted my attention to the incredibly sassy Betty Sharp in between solving some dogsick math problems.
The clock read 5.30 a.m. not one mintue more and not one minute less.

The silence was broken by the infrequent growling of the refrigerator next to which hung a black and white picture of her deceased husband and his bespectacled charm, taken almost a decade ago, encased in an elegant frame, abiding against a backdrop of the newly painted mauve walls. Next to this is another picture- this one comprised of the couple- his philosopher's nose and her haughty features stealing the limelight.

She began another laborious long haul down the stairs. This was a routine affair but sometimes when her health got the worst of her she slept through the highly demanding and painful endeavour. Otherwise commenced a normal day where the speed of a daily task was one tenth of what it could have been or what it should have been. Like for instance making tea required a minimum of 9 minutes and a maximum of 13 or so. If as a child I was ever asked about what I didn't want to be it would certainly be this..along with a lot of other things.

The oversized buff coloured bath robe hides her recent infliction - Herpes spreading along the surface of her right arm almost rendering it useless. But here is why this spitting image of death is the highlight of my flimsy post: her preposterous desire to live all by herself on her own terms as an amiable entity bothersome sometimes could have been deemed as courage only if it wasn't so shaky.

The sheets are clean, there is more than one dish on the table, the fridge doesn't tire out, water pump... check, fake teeth...check,walking stick...uncheck,a downright calculative mindset...check,if you help the old lady you'd be in HIS good books slogan..check,friends at hand...check,socializing to avoid lonliness...check,countless recipies deemed successful after mild experimentation...check,no children to fuss over...check,relatives to fuss over occasionally....check.
What do you need to worry about other than the clock ticking away and a knock at the door?
I greet her with half a smile.
Good morning.
Good morning...says death with a smile.
And so starts another day..the fragility of which I could never comprehend.

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.