[I decided not to give it a title]

So I'd originally written this for the Law School Lit Mag. Submitted it. Lets see how it goes. *Fingers crossed*


In fields of gold
Under the burning sun
We let our spirits soar
And we grew old
We grew as one
Walked out childhood’s door
And sitting by the firelight
Way past our prime, far beyond
Gnarled and old and spent
The voices in my head they went
These boots are meant for walking
For playing they are not.

Across the lands
So fair and free
Whose rivers fill with blood
We walk in bands
In files of three
Our feet feel like wood
The children dead, their mothers weep
Their homes burnt, still burning
Chaos, wrought thus we
And in my head, they say to me
These boots are meant for walking
For fighting they are not.

In secret nooks
Whispered goodbyes
Hurried glances full of stealth
Poems scribbled in old books
As time flies by
Return to haunt us both
Forbidden love, so sweet its taste
So dangerous, So cruel, So vile
Letting you live, yet leaving you dead
The voices, they said, inside my head
These boots are meant for walking
For loving they are not

And time flew by
Till everything turned cold
Seasons changed, years grew on
The lakes, the rivers, the sky
Stayed as old
The frogs continued to spawn
I did but walk all my life
Away from all I ever wished
Till the fire of my heart was stilled
Then the secret, the voices, they spilled
These boots are meant for walking
Yet for walking they are not.

I LOVE Old Hindi Songs.

So I've been listening to Hindi songs all day. The really old ones. The ones that make you go 'Oh my FUCKING God', I heard these songs when I was a baccha. And they're lovely. You can imagine them. In your head. Its like there's this grainy reel playing in your head, and you can see yoursself, etc. etc.

I LOVE Old hindi songs. They have that sense of poetry in them that today's gaana's lack. They're so lyrical. And so beautiful. And so cute some of them are.

I love old hindi movies too. But I can't really get my hands on those.

So I stick to the songs.
And they're the perfect accompaniment for while working. They don't demand you to pay attention to them. They're there in your subconscious playing. And the tune remains in your head, way after you've shut your laptop, and are nicely on your way to a dreamless sleep [At least thats the case with me!]

So. I'm off. To listen to my purane Hindi gaane.

Till then,

Babuji Dheere Chalna,
Pyaar Mein Zara Sambhalna,
Bade Dhoke Hain Is Rah Mein.

Catching Falling Stars- 5 to be precise.

Its that time of the year again.

What time?

Why Meteor Shower time of course!

I sat for my second meteor shower in Law School. Last time, it was with a very good friend, a senior, and we had this long conversation about law school and life.

Tonight, I sat with another good friend.
But we had no profound discussions.
We didn't talk about Law School.
We didn't talk about Life.

We listened to music.
And we looked for shooting stars.
And we looked for shapes in the clouds.

Last year, that conversation on the terrace made me finally feel like part of something.
Tonight's conversation, it made me feel like I was part of Law School in a different sense.
Not the sense of just becoming part of something,
but the feeling of being part of something.

I'm beginning to find my place here. And its not the place that does it.
Its the people.

Sometimes the most meaningful conversation are full of silence.

Shadows Across The Sun

Dull.
It darkens.
Gloomy. Dreary.
The trees become,
Foreboding monsters.
Their hands reaching out,
To catch me.
Leaves, scuttling around like crabs,
Like memories.
Long forgotten,
Ever remembered.
Sit on the bench,
Chilled to the bone.
The wind whispering,
Its darks secrets in
My ears.
Hair whipping across,
My face, stung with cold.
Dull.
Dreary.
Like shadows across the sun.


Bright.
It brightens.
Sunny. Hopeful.
The sky beams,
The trees quiet.
Their ominous countenance,
Stilled by a single ray
Of sunlight.
The breeze lifts me,
Plays with me
Dances
With tendrils of hair.
Whispering, congratulating.
‘You’re alive’ they say.
And I am. Truly am.
In every sense. I am.
They touch my sense.
And I exist.


And it darkens yet again.
This flighty world.
All because of the
Shadows across the sun.

Blood. Shot.

The silence deafening, still, I can sense the noise. The world moves, in tandem with my pulse. I can feel it. I can feel every thud of blood against the thin walls of my vein. I can feel it, the earth moving beneath my feet. I can see the stars too, in their dance with the clouds, ever so coy. And I can see the street lights. Harsh, yet oh so soothing. I stagger to my feet. Aware of every millisecond that it takes me to reach my equilibrium. Aware of the 'swoosh' inside my head. So minutely aware. Of. Every. Single. Thing.
The rush of the wind against my skin. Aware of the movement of every strand of hair. I feel myself becoming one with the elements. Stable as the earth, as ever-moving and restless as the wind. Every cell intense, like the fire. And as tranquil as the puddle in front of me.
The puddle.
I lean forward. Aware of the shift in my centre of gravity. So aware. So intensely aware. The world comes up to meet me, to cushion. The ground reassures me, its there for me, it will cushion my fall.
And I look at the puddle.
I see my eyes.
Blood. Shot.


The silence is deafening. I can hear my life flash past me. I look up, eyes wide, like a deer blinded by the headlights of an oncoming car. And I see the sneer.
The sneer.
It rips into me. The disfigurement alien, yet so natural on that face. A face I could never get enough of.
I can feel myself falling. Feel the weight of every molecule of air bearing down upon me. Pushing me to the ground. I feed my resistance with thoughts to live.
I. Will. Live.
For a minute, I'm defying gravity. Rising again in eternal hope. But as they say, whats written is written. I fall.
Thud.
I can feel the impact in every cell.
I look up.
Through my blurred vision,
I see.
The tears that cloud those eyes.
The face is hazy around the edges.
But I can see the love.
The mask has been lifted.
Or is it one last act of kindness.
Assuaging the fears of a dying man.
I can feel the gaping hole in my chest.
Tearing at every fibre of my being.
Devouring material me.
Liberating. Fatal.
I look past my chin to the bullet.

Blood. Shot.


Its red. Oh so red.
I reach for the glass.
Its cool. So cool against my palm.
My fingers cradling its soft contours,
as one would a baby.
My baby.
Never questioning.
Never answering.
Always listening.
The bile rises in my throat.
I will it down.
It shall not ruin this.
My climax to the perfect movie.
So beautiful.
So truly beautiful.
I raise the glass to the light.
It shines. It sparkles.
I can see through it.
My world red.
I raise my head.
Throw it back in a split-second,
of abandonment.
Of pure happiness.
And I flick my wrist.
The fire trails my throat.
And for a minute,
I'm one with me.
And then it rises.
Uncontrollable.

Blood.
Shot.

I'm being all dark and twisty again.

I reach for something,
deep within the confines of my head.
Matter lost in time,
abstract, never really mine.
Treacherous thought cloud my vision,
as tears threaten to spill.
empty spaces draw me in,
escapes from the usual din.

I'm running around in circles,
running endlessly in my head.
Hands spread in hopeless prayer, futile
greedily asking, bypassing the turnstile,
of faith, and the workings of powers above,
pleading for something to heal the noise.
But your prayers are not for me,
alike, false promises and traitors are we.

Dissolved in my own dark, I fold inward,
Searching for indestructible answers,
to questions that never did exist,
to theories that never will subsist.
I lose myself in thoughts of that,
that has never found itself existing.
I look to you, but you turn away,
I call to you, but you do not stay.

Jump from the burning building,
I follow instructions in my head,
Towers of the past, topple and burn,
within me, in pain, they twist and turn.
Charred and burnt, I lie in a heap,
and within pain, the hope is found.
Far from vestiges of the past,
what is to be emerges at last.

For you, a hundred times over, Mum.

My mother asked me a question today, in the midst of all our arguing. A question that really got me thinking, and missing her at the same time. She said, "If I die in two years, you'll still be stuck in Bangalore. What'll you do then". Of course I argued that I'd fly down and see her, and that she shouldn't be talking like this. I even threatened to slap her if she said something like that again (at this point certain readers, and some of my friends would probably go *GASP*). But, then I thought about how I actually would feel. And I realised what an impact she has had on me. More than the usual mother-daughter kinds (but then everyone else already probably thinks that about their own mum). Therefore this a sort of delayed tribute to my mother, you could call it a belated Mother's Day gift. 'Cept she'll probably never read it. So Mum, here goes, Just for you.

Dear Mumma,

I'm not going to start with the usual, oh you held me in your womb for nine months and nurtured me as a child. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm not grateful for that, I AM. I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for you. I just don't remember any of that. What I do remember is how you would sit me down and tie my shoelaces for me before I went off to school. Or how once I heard you use the word bloody, and you were so ashamed to have said it in front of you kid, you kept saying sorry. And I didn't even know what the word meant.

I remember you being there for EVERY play, every Parent-teacher meeting, every Prize-giving. Every little insignificant thing in my day-school career.

I remember you and Dad driving down to school in Galway to bring me lunch, because you knew I'd be hungry. I remember watching you come home from work, all tired, just to meet two squabbling kids. And how you'd sit down and sort us out, even though all you'd want to do is sleep. I remember you locking yourself up in the room, after pretending to have gone to work, so that you could study for your MRCOG exam. And once we realised your ruse, letting us in, bit not after hours of begging and pleading, and slipping chits under your door. And then you'd let us have your banana chips, and you'd laugh as Faizan sucked his toes, and I looked through your books with the cool pictures. I remember how proud I felt when I watched you walk across to get your degree in London. My shoulders broadened instinctively, and my chin has probably never been higher in its meagre existence. I stood on the chair and clapped for you. And then told everyone I was sitting next to very proudly that THAT was MY mum. As if I was the sole reason you were getting the degree in the first place. I remember so many moments when you've made ME proud of you.

I remember you kissing every grazed knee. Feeding me bread dipped in warm milk, because I just couldn't eat anything else. Holding me close, when I wouldn't stop crying about some insignificant thing. I remember how you fought for me not to go to boarding school. And how you dropped me off at the gate, and left smiling, just so I wouldn't fell bad. I'll never forget how many times you'd patiently listen to me whine about a million things. How you watched me attempt about a million failed dishes in the kitchen, but you never helped, I had to learn for myself, you said.

I hated you sometimes. When you'd make me rutt my times tables, and not leave me till I finished my homework, or studied for the next exam. When you'd favour my brother over me, and yell at me for being the eldest and STILL being irresponsible. When you'd make what I thought were unreasonable rules, and NEVER budge from them.

But you'd always make up for it. The apologising, and yummy food after the fights. The pizzas and the donuts you'd make when we were still in Ireland and you still had some time on your hands. The hugs and the bedtime stories and the Ice-cream sessions (and your stealing from my bowl of Ice-cream, even when you had your own).

I was a kid then. And it seemed like Mum could do anything in the world. And that Mum had a solution for everything. I've grown now. There are no more whiney phone calls or detailed descriptions of my day. Just the same questions and the same answers ("whatsup" and "nothing"). I don't run to you every time I'm upset and rant, I rarely ever let you knwo I'm upset.

But you're still my Mum. You're still the person I cried with the day I passed out, because I felt like my world had been turned upside down. You're still the person with the voice that makes every thing better at the end of the day. You're still my favourite person to entertain, albeit in manners far removed form 5-year old antics. You're still the person I love to fight with and argue with and hate (just a little though), because you know exactly how to make up afterwords. You're still my favourite person to go shopping with. And you'll ALWAYS be.

I've always considered myself a 'Daddy's Girl', and I probably am. But there's so much of you in me Ma, that I find myself amazed sometimes at how we're so similar. You inspire me. I see you work, sometimes up to 12 hours a day, at the oddest hours of the day, and I know that if there ever was a woman who could do it all, its you. I listen to you talk about how you never wanted to be married, how being unmarried would have let you grow even more as a doctor, and I realize how much you love us. For you to put one of the most important things in your life, your career, on hold, for us, tells me how much you love us. I listen to you talk about Pa, about how you made so many adjustments for him, and I understand what love actually is. Its not the sky turning bluer, and the sun shining brighter. Its being able to make the day sunny, when its cloudy and overcast. And I see the two of you together, and I know that I'm lucky to have been born to such wonderful parents. I'll never be able to grow up and NOT have a career, you never let me think of such a thing in the first place. I look at you, and I know that somewhere (some place buried under layers of laziness and procrastinating tendencies), there is a part of you that will never let me sit idle. I see you being non-confrontational, gentle, tolerant; and even though it irritates me to no end to see you take so MUCH shit from people, I respect you for it. Because it's tough to be nice to the same people that try to make life living hell for you. I watch you assert yourself, very very subtly, and I know my mother isn't a push-over.

What you've done may seem ordinary and usual to everyone else. But for me, I don;t know if I'll ever have the strength, the wisdom or the gumption to lead my life the way you've led yours. I love you Mumma, not just for the fact that you're incredibly naieve sometimes, and a little slow, and just soo much fun to make fun of. But because you have a heart of gold, you teach me a new lesson every day that I'm with you, and every day that you;re away. And even though I'd rather not have you living in the same city as me, sometimes its for reasons that are not just purely selfish.

So yes, in response to your question of what I'd do if you died in two years time. THAT won't happen, first of all, because God doesn't hate me that much. But if it ever does, not two years, or three years but whenever that happens. I won't cry. And I won't regret. Not because I don't love you. But because I do. I love you too much to want you or your soul to ever see me like that. So, I won't cry. I be grateful for having you in my life, and I'll work on me. I'll work on living my life the way you lived yours, and achieving whatever I set out to achieve. And then when I'm done with all that, I'll open that Girls School you always wanted to. And I'll make sure whatever you taught me, I teach them. I won't cry. I'll try and be as happy as I can, because I know that'll make you happy. I won't cry Ma, I'll make you proud instead.