a crystal bottle, a thousand worlds, a million shards

i wish i had a crystal bottle with sharp cuts and smooth curves. silhouettes of angles and bends, brilliance of glass, as fragile as astounding. stories untold, unseen held within, stories heard and seen treasured inside the glass mansion built with crystals of mind, body and soul to hold memories, hopes, aspirations, desires, anguish, torments, tears, laughter and smiles.  i'd look at it, for hours, a lifetime cramped into those minutes, a lifetime spent in those hours. every now and then, a ray of light would fall on it. caught off guard. amplified. reflected. dazzled. broken into brilliance of millions of shimmers. blob of illumination for sometime. lost into nothingness the next moment.
i'd save it. keeping it away from world and everything else. i'd carry it with me everywhere. i'd keep it hidden in the deepest corner of my existence. it'd be mine. whenever i wished, i'd take it out. flaunt it to acknowledgement of existence then stow it back into bliss of secrecy. it'd have a cork. stopper on all the tides. it'd hold an ocean in it. the cork would be tight. the ocean would be immense.
i'd shake it. a thousand jingles would come to life. i'd put my ear to it and all will be silent. there'd be whispers, there'd be prayers. there'd be promises, unsaid, hushed, forgotten. there'd be jokes, there'd be laughter, stifled, old, dead. there'd be shouts, there'd be songs, there'd be silence. there'd be clatter of rain drops, millions of them, abandoned by the sky, falling on a dark night, cry of sky's broken heart, opening up, a grimace of clouds, illuminated with a wave of lightening rippling through sky.
i'd open it and wafts would spill out. lighter than dreams, more inconspicuous than fragrances, more vivid than realities. there'd be smell of a lover, the scent of his existence seeping in through every pore of me as i lay next to him, smell of love, passion, reluctance, desire and ecstasy  there'd be smell of that damp room, as i sat listening to silence of night, smell of sea as tides laugh with each other, mocking my insignificance. there'd be smell of my mother, as i snuggle into her back, clinging to her dress, feeling soundless rustle of her shirt between my fingers, filled with dread, overcome with calm.
i'd look into it and the ocean will be raging. there'd be horizon holding blue of ocean and abyss of sky. the world and everything beyond. endless possibilities. orange of sunrise, gleam of light travelling thousands of miles, falling at my feet, seven colors fused together into one, silver when peeking from behind the clouds, black of depth of sea, darker in its silence than in color, there'd be color of your eyes, as you look away, lost in your thought. there'd be the world i'd watch from corner of my eye.
and then, i'd put the cork back. the sounds would stop. scents would descend back into oblivion, scenes would dissolve. strand by strand. and then, there will be nothing. just the crystal bottle. unfazed, intact, beautiful. i'd cork the world and all its brilliance into that crystal bottle, stow away universes and their secrets with one sweep of hand, discard deepest sorrows and biggest joys with a flick. it'd be mine to hold, and mine to shatter, into million shards, send it back to the smoldering furnace that made it, reduce it to specks of soil, mix it back with dirt under my feet, to unleash million more stories or break a thousand worlds.

one of those days...

one of those days,

when the truths hurt and smiles go sly, 

false comfort in lies unknown, 

a little sadness of times gone by, 

the world moves a little to the left, 

and then a little to the right, 

searching for its center

that just keeps slipping by 

one of those days, 

when hopelessness is the new high, 

the peace of giving up, 

the joy of a fizzling try, 

the gift of a failure, 

the bliss of oblivion, 

of the night sky 

the darkness that descends 

is just another friend

showing up uninvited, 

and promises to stand by 

one of those days, 

when little things count 

a kiss, a hug, an averted goodbye, 

sound of your breath, 

your silhouette against my sky, 

touch of your hand, 

your fingers running by, 

a smile in your eyes, 

little meanness in your try, 

one of those days, 

when this is all i need, 

when you are the drug to live by 

the chime of her eyes

amused stares, confused smiles and hurried rearrangement of expressions greeted their mute conversation, as always. he could almost read the thousand questions in people's minds- why? how? who? when? what reasons? good enough?

he smiled at those unasked questions, his unspoken answers lost a midst the shifting glances. only remnants of an inward smile hovered in the air.

he looked back at her, trying to locate the reason for everyone's curiosity. once again, he was lost. her eyes, effortlessly, captured his brief attention span. the question was quickly lost in his own mind. he'd probably never understand people's confusion but then, he wasnt supposed to either.

he was in love with the chime of her eyes, her silence... 

stories attached...

she settled more comfortably in her seat. the scene outside her window was changing rapidly. the trees went past her window just as quickly as brown patches of barren ground took over her sight, only to be replaced by a yet new scene. as the train gathered speed, so did her nerves. she loved train rides. it helped her confine her perspective to the sides of the window, only concentrating on a scene, one at a time, staying only for long enough for her to see. some of them stayed in her memory for her to ponder later while others went by leaving no imprint behind but a moment that passed without effort.
the train took a turn and she could see sights of outskirts of a village materializing. secluded huts, young and old men leaving for work, with a tired yet determined look on their face, a steel lunch box in hand and who knows what thoughts in their minds. the haphazardly strewn huts and shops were becoming more and more scattered.
monotony of brown and green was taking over her vision, only broken by an occasional bright yellow or pink of a bill board painted with bad drawings. she had always found such bill boards amusing. they were the true caricatures of life. the bill boards flaunted everything from a good engine oil for a tractor to a happy family of three in an advertisement for a local "baba's" magical healing powers. they confined lives and all its worries within their frames all with just a few names, bad drawing and catchy color combinations. names varied, their claims varied. bill boards remained the same 50"X60" bright colored blobs.
amongst the speeding names, she only caught a few when one of them caught her eye. 'Dr. Rajiv's dental clinic' it said. the name had been painted in a deep green over a yellow sheet of metal, with two sets of happy teeth drawn besides it. the name had been painted with casual disregard. the 'R' wasnt as twisted as it was supposed to be.


" hi, i am Rajiv" he said, with a warm smile, extending his hand. "hi, i am asha", she replied, smiling, taking his hand.

" i dont think he is as weird as you people think he is. i mean, sure he is a little quirky and says weird things sometimes but that doesnt make him any worse than rest of the guys. if anything, Rajiv has the ability to stand up for what he thinks is right" said Asha, fiercely to her friends. "yeah? like his own language that he writes his name in? its barely legible by standards of english" chimed one of her friends, as rest of them giggled even more. "he just puts a curved R. its almost artistic" Asha protested. they almost ignored her but stopped discussing him all the same. they had come back to the hot topic of class- what is the deal with the new guy in class, something everyone wondered but no one bothered to find out.

" why do you bother with what those people say? they dont know you. besides, who are they to you anyways? so it hardly matters what they think. forget it, Rajiv. cheer up. you still owe me that golgappa treat, remember? lets go for that. ice cream's on me" she said, standing up, extending her hand. he took it, smiling,  just like she had, the first time they had met.

"i know. and i agree. i love you too. i didnt realize when or even why, but i liked your quirks. you are weird and weirdly, i like you for being so. did i say like? sorry. like doesnt begin to define what i feel. i love you. Rajiv. "

"why are you saying all this? whats wrong? you know i was kidding. how can you think i meant it?! its like you either dont know me at all or are refusing to see anything", she said, pleadingly. tears swam in her eyes and her hands shook. but she held it together. he stood there, with her back to her, refusing to see anything literally. " do you really have to go?" she asked, calmly. her voice indicated neither dread nor sorrow, just a plain question. "no. but i will go all the same" he said. "good bye, Rajiv" she said.


she blinked. the train was slowing down, it was a small stop, one of the thousands minor stations in India that are made out of nowhere really. Dr. Rajiv's smiling set of teeth had been left behind a long time ago. she shook her head ruefully. even after all this time...
some names would always have a story attached with them, forever, she thought. some names would always bring back images- good or bad, she realized. some names were meant to stay and not not just sift in and out of frames of memory. some names left a permanent imprint, she confessed... 

finding love

well, i recently came across a story of  two people madly in love with each other. there is nothing new about that bit. they both met at 14, married young and lived a happy life for few years. and then, everything else caught up. work, appointments, deadlines, chores etc etc etc took up that part of life which was meant to be for love. love stayed or died away, i don't know about that but marriage did fall apart. years of separation later, they both run into each other again. well, while the wife was smarting under the awkwardness of situation, the guy, well, he just stared at her. he looked at her and fell in love, again. you see, the guy had amnesia and over those years, he had lost pretty much all his memories. but he met his ex wife and just like so many years ago, fell in love with her again, wondering all the time what could have possibly gone wrong in the world for him to want to leave such a person.

that says something about love, now, doesn't it. we all find it at sometime and we all do something to lose it. some of us get a chance to make up for our mistakes while others aren't so lucky. but the point is that love does exist all the time but sometimes it is forced to take a back seat what with everything else seeming to be so much more important in our life. maybe its human tendency to seek love but take it for granted as soon as we get it.

so if you love someone but have been wondering about righteousness of the whole thing for some time, stop and look again, think few years hence when maybe you wont have the baggage of life. close your eyes and try to look for that person you fell in love with the first time. i am sure beneath all the tensions and everything else going on, you will find that person still waiting for you right there with same look in their eyes that had you hooked the first time!!!! (cuz like it or not, all of us cant be amnesiac)

blogsville...

okay, so i have been gone from this place for quite some time now, not that someone sat and noticed. but the thing is i actually ran out of any stuff to talk about. the urge to write was gone. and even though i tried hard, i just couldnt come up with anything. and if it had come down to trying to write, i was missing the whole point anyway. so i gave up.

recently, when i finally decided that it was time for me to get back in this world, i started working on it. i went through different pages in a hope to be able to find something that would strike a chord and something would stir. so numerous posts, countless words and unimaginable comments later here i am actually writing a post. something did strike a chord after all. and that happened to be the blogsville itself. while i was rummaging through different people's thoughts, poking my nose somewhere, a finger here, an eye there, the thing that struck me the most was the magnanimity of this whole thing. i realized, for the first time actually, what a real cool place this is. unlike the real world, there is a space for everyone to be themselves. there is a hopeless variety of webpages here. someone is talking about their daily life, someone is writing stories, someone is putting up serious questions to think about, someone is being funny, someone is teaching is vocabulary and someone else just being here. no one really knows anyone else here. most people dont even know the real names of people they have met and befriended here. they have never seen each other and yet they are more real than the 'real' world out there in many forms.

some to think of it, it is an interesting spot. you can talk about your heartaches, bitch about your boss, talk about your crush, crack jokes, write funny stories etc etc etc. you could be anyone during the day but here, you can be yourself, if you choose to be. you dont have to pretend to like anything just for sake of it, no need to put up with stuff tat you dont like. you could be in a boring marketing job or have to sit and stare at numbers whole day long to make a living- but when you are here, you can be a kid, an intellectual, the prankster, the funny guy, the witty one, the storyteller, the english teacher or anyone else you want to be. it is all about you and thats gotta be different from the rest of the stuff.

it was not intended to be a post, not that it is actually. only that while thinking about all sorts of things i could write about to actually come back here, i realized for the first time what had i been missing on all these days. i am glad i realized that. so cheers to all bloggers, who like me, know about the real worth of this virtual world.

                                                              
all i can say is, its such a bliss to be back!! ;)

cupid, i dont like u much!!!

                                                             
 okay, the title may sound weird at first but trust me, i am a normal girl with no qualm whatsoever with love and associated feelings. infact, i would love to fall in love one day, like all other fellow human beings out there. but yeah, there is somethng in this relation that i do not like. what i don tlike is the initial phases of a thing, just when feelings ae kindling up, just when you are beginning to realise about your feelibgs for someone. call me weird, but thats how it is....
i hate having a crush on someone!!!! i do, i really do!!! okay, to have someone you think about often, which might give you incentive towards something might sound like just added advantages to the fact the your heart is warming up to someone and opening itself to new vistas of life, right? no!!i doesnt.not to  me anyway!. what i think of having crush on someone is that you become constantly aware of someone's presence or absence. what they or how they behave becomes so much more important than it is.you start evaluating their every action with much more detail, much more than you do yours!!!! everything you do, somehow tracks youback to the thought that how might that action of yours affect that person!! now comeon, how well have you done on your exam, tht could not, in whole wide world, affect your crush's feelings. but no, thought is a far fetched thing during that phase of life.
and dont even get me started on what happens when the person u have a crush is in the same room as you. besides the usual tripping, just cuz you were not apying attention to where you were going(do i need to elaborate what were you doing when u werent watching your step!!!), making a fool of yourself in front of an entire room full of people and ofcourse that one blessed read darn soul too, your walk is altered, you cant walk straight neither can keep a straight face even if you are trying your level best to ignore snide remarks or sniggers of your friends at your altered attitude and ofcourse previous tripping session. work at hand seems so less important once that person walks in and yet you try, maybe not frantically, but in subtle ways to work it out in such a way that your crush will notice you. pretty dumb, huh?? not to someone who's been smitten by the love bug!! constant teasing , constant poking, constant craning of neck to see where that one person is, constant loss of attention in your conversation cuz your ears are trying to pick up fragements of conversation going on in other part of room-this is all a part of package deal of CRUSH!!!

but more than all these things what i hate the most about having a crush on someone tht it ruins your chances of having an issueless friendship with someone. and if you, somehow, develop a crush for a friend, well, in some part of wrold that might be a happy scenario, but not in my nook of univrese. i think having feelings associated with a friend complicated matters more than you sign up for.. it does affect friendship somewhere. the pangs of jealousy when your friend mentions othre people, a constant joke of finding each other a corresponding girlfriend/boyfriend starts hurting you when it shouldnt. objectivity goes away from what you say to them and how they respond to your things!!
although crush in itself sounds bad to me, even worse situation is, yes there is a worst case scenario, is when you cant pluck enough courage to tell that person how much he/she means to you. you stand there, waiting for them to somehow seee things you cant bring yourself up to say, for watever reasons. and when they dont, all you are left with is a hurt heart, bruised dignity and a throbbing toe!!

and yet you cant help the stupid thing!! you cant help the warmth that comes to your face when you see that person, you cant suppress the smile when that one person throws back his/her head to laugh at a joke!!! you cant, you just cant help it at all!!!! see what a vicious circle it is!!!
no wonder i hate it!!!

P.S. all the above mentiopned conditions are a result of my case studies on specimens of species homo sapiens going through this condition at some point of time. any resemblance with any person, known or unknown, is purely coincidental. no section of this writing bears any connection to the author except the fact that she thought of all the wonderfull words in her own little head!!