Dying

Everyone dies. Every day. We shed our skin, even the inches that haven't worn thin. We're discarding selves of ourselves we no longer need. Grieving through tears what we no longer fear. We let go of much though our instincts instruct us to hold on. Cling to things that feel right and clutch close to heart the wrong like a dearly beloved song. Let us not forsake our humanity. Vanity is a shining scar. Can't choose our stars, but we can choose our scars. Let us lose them. Some part of us has died every day since the day we came to be. We're dying till we're dead. All that dies within us, sprouts something new in its stead.

May the worst in me die today. And if the best in me does, I pray it lives again tomorrow.

One-Way

On a humid May evening in Bombay, I step into an auto rickshaw and start chatting with the driver. We speak in Hindi but I've translated the conversation, mostly.

'Really hot these days, eh?'

'Tell me about it. Today was particularly bad.'

'I can't believe they made people step out and vote (a couple of days ago) in the midst of this terrible summer.'

'Yeah, I didn't vote. I have never voted. I don't trust the government. They don't care about us so I don't care for them. All they care about is staying in power. They won't do anything for people like you and me.'

'Okay?'

'Some road repair this! Been a year and a half since they came to power but they haven't finished anything they started. One street or the other dug up all the time. The work just never gets done. Look here, you call this a road?' He points to the road we're on, a patchwork proudly bearing the mark of various embellishments over time. 'It's a three-wheel auto rickshaw and you're sitting at the back, so you don't feel much. You have two wheels balancing you, but for me, I only have one. It's no fun driving around. I feel every bump intensely. Achanak se gaddha aa gaya to gaand phat jaati hai.'

'No, I understand what you're saying. It's why I don't ride my motorcycle in this city.'

'Anyway, you have these awful roads to drive on, and on top of that the cops, they fine you incessantly. Just yesterday I was taking a nap in my vehicle near Yoggers Park (Joggers Park). It was seven in the morning and two cops had walked up to have a cup of tea nearby. They saw me lying there and fined me for parking illegally. Drivers like us are easy pickings for them to meet their revenue targets.'

'Seven in the morning? I am sorry to hear that.'

'In a city like Bombay, they're always out to make a quick buck, so they'll catch you for some random reason, and make you pay even if you haven't done anything wrong. The government lets it happen.'

'Hmmm.'

'It's like that in Bombay, and somewhat like that in Delhi, but it's not like that in Yogi Baba's Lucknow.'

'Really? That's where you're from?'

'Yes, the cops there can't mess with you. I mean, sure they can fine you if you do something wrong, but they can't wantonly stop and extort money from you. Sarkar haalat tight kar degi. Because of the government's support, we can tell them to take a hike if they overstep.'

'Oh, nice. By the way, we need to go here.' I point to a narrow lane on the right. 'But it is a one-way, so take the next right turn. It will bring us onto this lane.'

'That's fine, it's right here.'

He zooms into the lane before I can ask him to stop. Wondering what just happened, I am lost for words. Fortunately, there's no traffic incoming and I've arrived at my destination in less than ten seconds. I assume he will turn the auto around, and go the right way after dropping me. 

'Here is good.' I get out. 'Okay, sir. Thank you.'

'Okay. See you.'

He continues straight, the wrong way up the one-way lane.

How

How to talk to someone you don’t wish to know
How to make happen on the go
How to flow with the flow
How to put on a show
How to fail, follow and lead
How to thunder, storm and recede
How to command, conquer and concede
How to draw the line from worth to deed
How to walk on without a clue
How to man a galleon without a crew
How to lie about things that aren’t true
How to do you
How to make more money much too fast
How to make a million moments last
How to unroll a die you didn’t cast
How to pray a path through the pangs of the past
How to nurse a future scar
How to take the wheel of your rollercoaster car
How to be farther when you’re already far
How to water pain in the winter sun
How to do nothing that needs be done
How to love those you can’t for fun
How to mourn something before it’s begun
How to laugh the wrong way
How to hurt the right way
How to sing anyway
How to heal another day
How to be generous without keeping score
How to cut the charade from every chore
How to break a window when you’re shown the door
How to find what you’re looking for

Plastic

Mine is a plastic love. Produced readily, pollutes easily. It can take on any colour and sometimes let you see right through. Lethal in small doses, fatal otherwise. Tender and toxic. It is the fabric of dollhouses, the stuff of garbage. An elastic love that stretches itself, and the limits of what it can do. It has survived a hundred years, and will endure a thousand more. Useless and useful and listless and wistful. It can destroy a planet and often be a fistful. It is the algae laced bottom of a water bottle, the hard yellow hat of a construction worker at the throttle. The kind you hate on the internet and heart in real life. The inflatable raft in an infinity pool, a lifejacket. The junk that fills rooms and takes over the streets. Held to the lips and knocked around by shoes. You can always tell when it’s burning, it can suffocate. It smoulders. You can bend it but never tear it. Negate it but never compare it. You can share it. It is not degradable.

Commute

I like the winter sun. It's untimely in a city where sweaters would long be discarded, if they were woken from perennial hibernation, to begin with. February is knocking. This month's been a flash, and the year before it felt like a blink. I'll make it to work in time, but how much do I really have left? Calculation doesn't always have the answers. People walk purposefully towards whatever it is that keeps them awake at night. I am grateful for the breeze. Can't remember the last time I heard 'Life's a breeze'. School, I think. Where did all the lessons get us? Our inventiveness is incendiary. We keep finding new ways to hate one another and hurt ourselves. Everything dies except for hatred. We have inherited it and it is ours to bury. Mornings are a commute, trudging the country miles betwixt bed and bath, from coffee to clothes to cab. Anything can be a metaphor for anything if you spend two more minutes than you should with it. I don’t desire to dwell in one. Give me real or the room to make it. Somewhere in the crowd jostling into the train station, stealing steps on each other at each turn, is someone humming their one track playlist, louder than they imagine. Flowers perfume a square inch of air, offering up the faintest whiff to drivers-by, a gentle jolt that reminds me of the sun. It has been my friend this day. I will follow back. Go on, shine me the light of a million medallions. I won’t shy away from this dalliance. I will live here for the length of a single moment that holds within it the entirety of my existence. It is possible to feel infinite and infinitesimal at once. To will oneself into being at will. Will I remain long enough to watch myself grow cold? Will every single thing in these shops ever get sold? Dream. Be positive. Kindness is a beautiful thing. Save the world. Love me tender. The pop colour graffiti on the walls, our last bastion of expression, has taken a turn for the profound. I look around. Between a bottleneck and a traffic light. All of us wait, to be found.

Free

The king is dead

The courtiers fled

The soldiers bled

For a loaf of bread

The maid it fed

Now makes his bed

And in her head

Wakes a foreign dread

These bars of steel

Sheer walls of stone

Have echoed forth

Many thoughts unknown

Cut through the cracks

New sun has shone

That light is mine

And mine alone

I am a beast

Of heart and bone

A hungry seed

In desert sown

When towering weeds

Had overgrown

I wrung their necks

To forge a throne

A summer sung

Among my own

The bird remains

The nest has flown

For them that see

Past the canopy

Waits a misery

You must agree

You will decree

The swelling sea

Her sunken tree

Ever home to me

When in that boil

I choose to be

Am I then caged?

Pray, are you free?

The Writer's Creed

Fear not, my words.

Fear not the hour you were born or the piece of paper you were carefully, carelessly or precariously committed to. Fear not the thought that engendered you or the hesitation that endangered you. Fear not the fingers that typed you or the pen that scribbled you. Fear not the blocks that held you back. Fear not.

You will be read. You will be ignored. You will be celebrated, reviled and detested. You will be tested. Fear not. Fear not the eyes that take you in, or the mouths that spit you out. The blinks of disbelief, the stares of discontent, the nods of appreciation and the muted gaze of indifference. They will greet you one and the same.

Fear not the cynicism you carry or the cynics you attract. Fear not the love you foster or the fury you proclaim. There is a weight on your shoulders and it is heavy. Only a few will see it but it is there nonetheless. You’ll be great company on a good day and on another, a speck in the distance. On a bad day, you will preach. 

You will cross lines. You will pass judgment. You will condone and condemn and be the only shred of solace one has to cling to. You will skimmed through, skipped altogether or spent entire days with. You will cloud thinking and rain fresh perspective. You will crush notions and renew hope. You will not retreat. You will provoke.

Fear not the chuckles you invite or the curses that drop by anyway. They will never be enough. Fuck the distractions and the four-letter frowns. You have a purpose. To set minds spinning and enter conversations and contemplations with the subtle force of an honest intention. You will lift songs and power into speech. Speeches, someday.

You will be treasured. You will be forgotten. You will strike someone like a bolt of lightning and stay buried under an avalanche of inconsequence until someone else unearths you by accident. But, you won’t have aged. You are immortal, the bright beacon of a beating heart. You travel to places my feet will never set foot on.

Fear not the strangers you speak to or the strangeness you bring out in them. You are a plot to my mind and the key to its deceptions. You are my strongest hand and my deepest tell. Let us play like we always have. Without reason, often with. You have been my privilege to write and my pleasure to convey. You will be questioned.

I believe in you.

Tungsten

She's a young summer and a bright winter and the breeze that flows between. She's a candy floss will and a molten heart. She's a firefly.

She’s a short burst of hard laughter, the rock lead in a jazz ballad. She has aces in her eyes and a story up her sleeve. She is hard talk and small talk and no talk at all. She's a long night at a packed bar, a short flight next morning. She’s a welcome contradiction.

She’s soft cheer and sure grace. She pulls off a gown and a frown with the easiest of ease. She sways to no music, makes you swoon to her tune, she swings like no one’s watching. She dresses up and dresses down, and stuns you every time. She sports mascara but never a mask. She wears no airs.

She’s the darkest heaven and the brightest hell. She flits through time, without a thing to prove, like warm poetry on a trapeze. She leads firms, and lays terms, and takes what’s coming to her. She runs the show. She runs as deep as still waters go. She should run for president.

She’ll sting you with her honesty and nurse you with her presence. She knows no compulsion and only says what she means. She’ll flood you with answers and still leave you guessing. She walks like a tiger and runs like a child. She's pure fire and raw rain, her mind holds no regret. She’s the flicker of the filament of a bright yellow bulb. She is tungsten.

The End

At the end of this life, you will have laughed and loved, hurt and hated, fought and failed, won and waited. You will have tried and tested, cried and coped, dreamt, denied, helped and hoped. You will be learned and lonesome, wistful and wise, calm and clueless, it'll show in your eyes. You will have been anxious and affectionate, firm and furious, interesting, insecure, conscientious, curious. You will be a lot and a little you won't, you will have taken far more than you thought you could give, you will be tired but find yourself grateful, for every day you were lucky enough to live.

Smug

I sit here among you. I sit here with a drink in my hand and the odd smirk on my lips. You might think I'm a dreamer. You might believe I'm a schemer. But the truth, God's honest version of it, is I couldn't care less. I don't care for small talk and long winded conversations of no comprehensible consequence. I don't care who you are, what you've done and where you're from. I don't care for what you have to say. It's not that I despise you. It might appear to be the case, but I'm not judging you. No, that's unfair, because I don't know you. I don't despise you. It's just that I don't want to know you. You must be interesting. You must have some joke, anecdote or achievement up your sleeve, raring to unleash itself upon an eager audience. But, I will spare my ears the trouble and spare you an audience. I'm closing myself as the evening wears on. And I quite like how that feels.