Another face in the opaque crowd searching for some translucence to diffuse and project his myriad thoughts through this utterly abhorrent state of lame rigidity.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Abstruse Papyrus.



An OLD BOOK, BLACK in colour, rests on the table in an overtly synchronized state of vicious equilibrium with the dystopian world. Nothing is written on it's cover.
Light emanates from it. The whole spectrum.
Isn't black, supposedly a colour which absorbs all other colours, or let's say devours all other colours?
Is this good or bad, a miracle or a sin?
Will it be wise to open the book?
What is that book?
What lies inside?

p.s. - please pardon me for my naive painting.


Friday, May 28, 2010

An apparition!




She ensconced herself in her chair,
unaware of what was going on outside.
She flipped through the pages,
of "The Bridge Across Forever".

She was humming a tune,
oh, what was it?
A song of love,
'Sacrifice' by Elton John.

The execrable power cut,
out of nowhere.
The tube light seemed to glow,
in the fair darkness; she sighed.

She lived like a funny apparition,
not afraid of light,
but loathing the sun.
Hence all the curtains on the windows were drawn.

She walked up to the window,
and pulled the curtains.
The blood-like light of the evening,
touched her eyes.

She didn't block the light.
She let it mix with her sclera,
the white of her eye,
and become orange.

She was drinking with her sight,
all that she could.
She was extracting all the powers,
stupefied, there she stood.

She looked at the sun,
never taking her eyes off.
She had a fit of reminiscence,
what was she feeling, omniscience?

She knew everything,
had the power to do everything.
She could go anywhere she wanted to.
A tear formed at the corner of her eye.

She stared at the sun, without blinking....



Photo Credit : fineartamerica.com





Friday, May 21, 2010

Her and her lover!

She was getting overwrought about her exam. She was excogitating over the probable outcomes of the test the day after; what could and what would happen at college. The day had been a hectic one, comprising protracted peripatetic practices and astute argumentations. She was at a friend's place the whole afternoon. She had to return to her abode, and flip through the notes. Reluctant she was, but little, rather no option did she have to replace this one. The journeys and those despicable contemplations of the exam left her drained of all energy. She grabbed her bag, bid adieu to her friend and departed. Lackadaisically she boarded a rickshaw to reach the nearest bus stand. It was almost evening. On the way she saw little kids playing on a playground nearby. Seeing them she felt nostalgic, recollections of her childhood flashed before her eyes; but she was too tired to even smile. Reaching her elementary destination, with sluggish actions enough to infuriate the rickshaw puller, she paid her fare. With short unmindful steps she reached the bus she would be boarding to reach home. She was fortunate enough to find a vacant seat beside the window; it was in the last row though. She quickly occupied the seat lest someone else claimed it before her. She needed to sit, she really did. In a few minutes the driver ignited the engine; it bellowed and grunted like a raging bull, ready to charge at the enemy.
The bus started advancing. She reclined in her seat. Soon, within a few stops the bus got jam-packed with people. The uncouth unease of the congested bus did not bother her. She mused about mundane affairs such as how the sun rises everyday from the east and sets in the west; about inane things such as trying to calculate the diameter of Obelix’s tummy through imaginary tools of measurement. She yawned; she struggled to keep her somnolent eyes open. She was desperately trying to stay awake as she feared that she would miss her stop, moreover she found it embarrassing to doze off in a bus full of people. People were already noticing the half sleepy girl at the last seat; their stares had an overdose of resentment incurring invidious wrath; how dare she have forty winks in such a hot and humid weather, how can she be so heedless and sit there with such sheer complacence, when they were perspiring profusely and were burdened with so many worries.
The bus driver increased the pace; the bus ran wildly like a stallion in the desolate street. The setting sun winked at her through the trees, the light teased her eyes, played with her state of sleepy helplessness. She got annoyed, blinked her eyes, and pulled up a hand of hers to shield her eyes from the apparently harsh rays of the sun. Warm air was hitting her face, and it was pretty vexing too. She let her mind wander and wonder about anything and everything possible, so that the randomness of her thoughts undergoing destructive interferences produced tumultuous wicked noises, banging all the twenty two bones of her skull to keep her awake. Yes, she was a cantankerous egotist; she would even let her own thoughts murder her but would not stop complaining about the elements of nature tickling her. However, all her efforts and the efforts of nature were going in vain; she was trying to stop a moving train with her bare hands. She forced a stare with her bloodshot eyes at the distant sky where suddenly she saw black clouds appear out of nowhere, which were soon looming over head.
From warm air to cool air, she felt the transition and loved it. Nature, as if like her loyal lover, teased her for a while and was now making up to her for the mischief. The cool breeze hit her face. She closed her eyes. She quit thinking. She leaned her head sideway against the bus. The breeze ruffled her hair; the strands of her hair were dancing to the tune of the enchanting and rejuvenating zephyr, inveigled dexterously by it. It appeared as if nature was a passionate lover tugging at her hair, pushing her back and blowing cool moist air from his mouth to ease the irritation of her gentle skin brought by the warm air before. She relaxed. She knew she had reached her threshold and gave up on her efforts to keep away her already postponed siesta. She broke free of the realms of reality and drowned into the sweet plethora of fantasy. The caring windy lover ran his breezy fingers through her hair and cuddled her with his spiralling motions of airy hands. She slept like a child and nature sighed seeing her.
The bus kept moving; like her it couldn’t take a break from the wakeful state, even if it wanted to. The bus neared the stop where she was supposed to get down. She didn’t even stir; not showing a sign of getting up. Like a responsible lover nature called her name in his heavy thunderous voice to wake her up. She did not show any movement other than a feeble twitch in her face. Nature got worried; he had to do something to wake her up. It started drizzling. Tiny drops of water landed on her forehead, they moved down on her face embracing and her eyelids, tingling her with their brisk touches; the humble drops rolled down her cheeks gracing and damping them like innocent tears of happiness; leaving trails of their passionate touches the drops reached her lips and broke into an amorous kiss. She trembled a little in her sleep. Nature, a graceful lover he was could not have considered being harsh with his object of affection, yet he had no choice but to do something drastic to wake her up. It started poring heavily. He manoeuvred the huge drops of rain with the wind in such a way that they won’t hit her pretty face but hug her neck and rouse her with outright passion, and fervent compassion for sabotaging her slumber. She shivered. Drops of water dripped from her hair, she was almost completely drenched. Finally she opened her eyes. She was little worried about her getting soaked to the skin, rather she was delighted.
She didn’t have a hint that her stop was approaching. She sat there cosily in her seat. Nature got annoyed at how imprudent his loved one can be. Still, like a benevolent lover he made his last attempt to bring her back to senses. The rain stopped abruptly. She was slightly astonished but didn’t pay much heed. Nature made everything still; he made sure that there was enough quietude so that her auditory nerves can pick up the stimulus of the utterance of the name of the next stop by the conductor’s vocal chords’ oscillations. She stared at the sky which was clearing abnormally fast.
Nature sent a flock of birds flying in a V formation, which looked somewhat like a crooked arrow beseeching her to look at the direction the bus was approaching, but nary was a motion of her noted.
Nature gave up in disgust.
She missed her stop.
She persisted to look at the birds. She envied them. She wished she could fly.
Far away she saw an aeroplane. Fathom the arrogant adroitness of humans, they don’t cease to make the un-doable doable, she pondered. She smiled. She got lost in her random musings again.
She wished she had nine lives like the cats….

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Bowl Of Cereal

He lay on his bed wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling with stolid emptiness. His mind was blank and so were the white ceilings. He looked around to find some variety, something different. Alas! He didn't find any. Everything was white around. Yes, he was in an asylum.
He felt stranded and strangled. He needed to get out, to breathe and let his mind breathe. He needed oxygen to feed his nostrils and feed his brain, which was going numb. Not that he was able to think much with his bruised mind, but at least he could think of good food. Oh! How he would savour the hallucinated delicacies; those despicable phantasmagorical misleading imageries, absolutely unsynchronized with even a far-fetched fairy-tale reality, wrapped up in bohemian flavours of sugary chilies and honey like venom. Saliva drooped from his seemingly serpentine tongue. He derived unethically righteous, blissfully transgressing pleasure out of it. Well, food, that was the only thing he could think of, sitting in that closed, infinitely white place, which seemed to have only one dimension. Nothing but the act of feeling the chunks of elusive comestibles dissolve in his mouth breezed his mind; no art, no science, no sex!
Panting heavily, trying to breathe with his mouth open, he strained his mind desperately to bechance upon a scrumptious treat, but in vain. All he could think of was a bowl of cereal. He was slenderly disappointed with the food he had stumbled upon; but this shrewd traitor-like feeling was overshadowed by the respite brought by leastwise being able to find something to ruminate.
Precipitously and miraculously, like a flash of lightning, a roar of thunder, like a tempest being born from the womb of mother earth, the oceans, the mountains, the forests all conspiring with the new born, their temporary sibling, to beget a horrendous catastrophe; rushed in his thoughts, in a turbulent flow pushing him back with a hazardous punch making him hold his head, crawl on the floor and writhe in pain.
After a while, when his pain attenuated and his fear subsided, he sat up with renewed vigour, he rubbed his eyes and looked around with blurry yet focussed vision. With an abstract sense of clarity he saw the image of a bowl of cereal on the white wall in front of him; it seemed as if the picture was being projected by his mind onto the screen.
When a storm gets over destroying everything, it makes place for the new, and so happened with his mind; he was being able to THINK. His thinking process was marked by simplicity, discarding the varied inconsistencies of haywire language and incongruous rhetoric malapropisms. He started pondering over the bowl of cereal he could see before his eyes. Cereals, well, he loathed to have them. He imagined the cereals as adversities and the milk as the courage to deal with the adversities. Some people can gulp down the cereals with less milk, some with more milk, some with no milk at all. He was one who always used more milk and just swallowed the cereals along with the milk. His cereals used to turn into a mucilaginous paste, but he preferred that to the crunchy stuff, if not enjoyed it. He thought about it philosophically, some people can deal with affliction with little courage and yet succeed in getting over them, some people need a lot of courage to deal with disasters, and some plain indifferent ones just slip along giving troubles naught a thought. He was someone who needed a lot of courage to face calamities. But, corrupted and defiled by egotism and his own coherently unethical arrogance, justifiable only before his bereaved myopic vision, he decided to encounter adversity head on. It was, as expected an inelastic collision. Adversity took him along with it and drowned him in its oblivion mists and turned him into this. Why did he try to swallow the cereals without milk? He choked. His throat hurt, he felt the roughness of the cereals bruising the inner lining of his oesophagus, his saliva failing to make it any better.
Knock! Knock! He felt someone knock at his mind's door. Swiftly he returned from his state of philosophical pleasure to raspy reality. He found out that he was actually choking. He wasn't being able to breathe. What was happening? Where was he? He had so many questions on his mind, to which there were no answers and as it seemed, no time to find the answers. His wispy remembrance of deportation flashed before his eyes. That led to more questions. Who was he? Was he a soldier who was captured by enemies? Was he a traitor who was court-martialed? Was he a mafia don? Did he do something wrong? Was he wronged? So many!
Whatever doubts he had in his mind, remained so, but he was absolutely certain about one thing, he was being stifled to death. Again, questions. Why wasn't he in a wicked cell? Why was he put in this white walled scary cubicle? He wasn't mad, was he? He shouted to let them know that he was not mad, he wanted to die like a normal person and not like this. Oh,wait! What country was that? Would they understand his language? Again, was he really mad, and got cured phenomenally just then? Yet, he didn't cease shouting; he put tremendous pressure on his vocal chords to produce some sound, he felt his throat get sore and blood oozing out and greasing the walls of his throat; he coughed out blood staining the white floor giving it a devilish look, the blood spilt on the floor grinning at his misery; but not a sound was produced.
He lay there breathing his last breaths, and was soon still and stiff like an inanimate object.
He lay there amidst the white walls like a speck of cereal in a bowl of milk.
He, his thoughts were confined to a bowl of cereal.