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Showing posts from 2015

Mirror O Mirror

For the first time in months, I am by myself in this 2 BHK flat for the weekend. My brother went to Delhi on a surprise visit for our father's birthday. My room mate has went to his grandparents' native place. We've been staying together for 6 months now. Before that, I stayed alone in a 1 BHK flat for one and a half years. I stand before the mirror to look at myself. I look at my head. The hair are cropped quite short, a hairstyle I opted because it could hide my receding hairline. It didn't succeed. The inverted W gets more prominent every time when I look at the mirror. There's a pustule on my forehead, a little right to where a woman might wear a bindi. My eyes have sunk a little back, and the skin beneath my eyes is strikingly darker. I wasn't aware of this until my parents and my colleagues pointed this out. You don't notice these small changes that happen to you. Both my ears feel warm. The liberal hair growth on my body hasn't spared the

Play Me In Your Lap

A guitar Without a guitarist Just wood and metal There's no music A person Without a lover Just flesh and bones There's no life

Untitled V

I remind myself daily That I have forgotten you

A November Night

It's midnight in Delhi I go out to walk The wind is in hiding This road I walk on Has swallowed a few tears And heard all my stories It's usually me alone at this hour But there's a couple ahead of me They are walking holding hands I take out my cellphone You have not messaged yet I keep walking

Untitled IV

I was honest I was myself I will lie I will be infinite

Of Childhood Fears

Of the hundreds of dreams that I have seen over the years, and the dozens that I remember in varying degrees of vividness, there's one whose imprint hasn't faded even a decade and a half later. I saw this dream when I was around 10 years old. We used to stay in Vikas Puri in a 2 BHK house then. I was standing in the second bedroom when the vacant parking lot besides my house caught my attention. There was a cylinder that had just burst, and my brother was lying next to it. Split in half. I couldn't make out whether he was alive or not. I immediately went to my dad who was in the bathroom, shaving. He ignored me when I told him about it. My mother was equally nonchalant and busy cooking when I informed her. My parents ignorance shocked me. I woke up. For a long time, I couldn't go to that room of my house, especially at night. Between the bedroom in which all four of us used to sleep, and that other bedroom, there were the bathroom and the toilet. The toilet

The Ship

They say there are shores Where the boats go to sleep But this one is a ship And its moorings it has snapped The ship is tired It wants to swim a dreamless sleep But the sleep is always disturbed By the memories of the storms gone past One, which was innocent as a wave Lulled by the promise of a shore Drifted away confused Eventually estranged in a maelstrom Which in time it will escape Another, a storm that was magic Whose lightning used to light up the night sky Which I know must be raging In some other sea Or did it get tired too and so lies dormant Without the storm How does the ship know From how many million pieces It can piece itself together And what lies in each one of the million And how does the storm know Which ship will rebuild itself To face the storm again and again From the ashes That it was reduced to For all their passion They don't last the night And neither sees the morning sun They both go home The sea shelters them at it&#

Untitled II

Look around this room, When we walked in, It used to have a door, Now it's just the walls and the sky

Untitled I

I ran To leave behind What's inside of me

Sylvia Tera Swagger

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Dead Sylvia, You have been dead for over a year. I should have known better, but the signs were so bright that I looked away. Do you remember that day when I was crying, and you also wanted to cry, but you didn't? Because then both of would us be crying and there would be no one to wipe the other's tears. For the same reason, when one month back your ghost cried to me on the phone recounting the details of your last moments, I didn't cry. That day, or any day after that. I shared the news with many friends naively assuming rather than hoping that sharing the news would somehow lessen the impending pain. I resembled the person who has a revolver put to his temple not knowing if and when the trigger would be pulled. You told me who had killed you. For a long time, I avoided seeing his face, fearing falling into an abyss after being able to more vividly imagine the moment when he thrust the knife into you and your face after that. But when I did, his face looked at me

2014 - Time and Place - Part 0

Anonymous 0 2014 - Lets take a round figure 2048 :) This year has been like this. Full of geeky stuff. When i joined the company someone told me that rest of your life will be occupied mostly by your work and he is right. This year has been occupied almost by work only , So rest of post will be dominated by my work only. I will try and break year into 14 points or maybe i will eventually went on for round figure of 16. 1. Jan - Year started with a cricket practice and then a cricket match which my team won . Perfect start. This with chilly office trips and occassional work from homes mark the January month. 2. Feb - No different office , work , metro, 4hrs trip, not so good work somehow managed to let go feb also. 3. March - This is where things start looking interesting. Decided in my mind enough of this work. This needs to be changed. Bad dreams about future. This goes on for weeks before i finally gather courage to talk to my manager. Yes i was such a je

2014 - Time And Place - Part 6

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Anonymous 12 Congratulations! Your "emotional blackmail" has been successful and I'm finally writing this now! Just kidding, I had decided I would definitely write it this time after our talk on my birthday :). I would've preferred to see you on a cheeseburst diet though :P This year was not much eventful so this post is not going to be as long as the previous ones. The sad part is that I'm feeling bad because i don't have much to write here rather than the fact that my year was boring. Okay, I'll think about that later. So most of this year revolved around office. It kept me really busy because of which I was forced to ignore more important things. However, I learnt a lot in office, felt the necessity to try and excel in whatever I do (for the first time maybe?) and made a few great friends. I still have a lot to achieve and need to learn to manage work better so that I can take out time for other things. Other than office, I can only remember:

2014 - Time And Place - Part 5

Anonymous 10 The year is coming to an end and here I am doing the same things as I was during the start of the year in Jan, applying for M.S. in USA. It’s like life has come a full circle with lot’s of things happening throughout the year but ultimately I am back to where I began this year. It’s now or never for my graduate studies. I have decided that I am not gonna apply again and this is my last chance because I feel that it’s already going to be tough for me to go back to studies and delaying it further is not gonna help. The year started with me assigned some development project which is not normal because most of the work in my company is bug-fixing and code maintenance. So it was a really good opportunity to learn and I worked really hard for it. Even stayed late most of the days to meet the deadlines. But in the end the project got shelved and I was really disappointed to see that my time and work amounts for nothing. Though working on this project created a technically as

2014 - Time And Place - Part 4

Anonymous 7 It was a year of uncountable firsts for me. And this was evident from the word go i.e. 1st Jan, 2014. Ushering the New Year with close friends, all suited up, braving the winter chill of Delhi, getting a little tipsy and in general having a blast of a time was the perfect beginning to 2014. The next few months passed by rather too quickly and soon it was time for my internship. A small point to be noted here is that in my entire 20 years of existence, this was to be my first time away from home and that too for a period of 2 months. So I left Delhi with some apprehension, a hint of nervousness and a tinge of excitement. It was my first solo airplane flight. A few hours later, after being ripped off by the cabbie and some frantic last minute direction-seeking, I reached the place where I was to spend the next two months. My flatmates who were all senior to me by a couple of years were a huge help and welcomed me to their apartment by giving me a room to myself. With the

2014 - Time And Place - Part 3

Anonymous 5 This year commenced on a beautiful note. January started with a very challenging project with my friends that wasn’t successful in its true sense but did teach me lots of lessons. This was the birthday month of my most special friend so it certainly had to be great. Then came February sizzling with fests and galas. This was the most special February of my entire life as my special friend confessed his love to me, something I was yearning for years. Later followed a couple of weeks when I was high for reasons unknown :P. I witnessed casual hangouts becoming romantic dates and realized that the best thing in this world is to fall in love with your best friend and to be obviously loved back even more :). Being a very sincere and career-oriented person who always took it really hard on oneself, I tried to loosen the strings a bit. So, regardless of mid-sems and classes, I permitted myself to drown in the beautiful feeling completely for a while. April and May passed quickly

2014 - Time And Place - Part 2

Anonymous 4 Another year comes to an end. This year was definitely one of the most happening year of my life till now. It started with me joining a new company. I had been looking forward to this change. I was looking forward to meeting new people, making new friends, doing interesting work. But I not only got all this but more. Let me divide my experience at workplace into a two categories - work and life. My first project was really interesting, more of coding and learning, with a senior who was too much fun to work with (partly because he was leaving the company soon :P). Around first 6 months were too smooth and no tension was there in life. Then came the difficult time, that senior had left the company and I had to work with another senior who was too much of a micro manager! At times I had no answer to her questions, at times I had to work a lot (over the weekends as well) and wasn’t appreciated even a bit for it. Let alone appreciation, I was actually criticized for what i

2014 - Time and Place - Part 1

Anonymous 1 A farewell to two of my best friends. One blurred the line between friendship and love, other erased it. The year of change, of wins and victories but none to share it with, of growth and giving. Of breaching all lines and creating new ones . Of long conversations and longer silences . I would never give up a fight , but this time I was requested to. 2014 sums up to letting go I leave you with a line to remember me by : There are plenty of ways to enter a pool, the stairs is not one of them Happy 2015 ! Bring it on, life ! Anonymous 2 I just look back at what I have written in this section earlier and feel that there is so much more to be explored in the future that commenting on this year might seem childish a couple of years down the lane. Is that gonna stop me? Naaah. So here I go. Reflecting on this year brings back hell load of memories. And each one of them has left me a more learned person. Learned!! I am gonna laugh at this next year :D Not wa