silence please

i loose count of how many fists landed up on the wall of my bedroom. the light is off, automobile lights keeps showing through the window from time to time. I lie down on the floor, legs stretched, head bent down, hands folded behind my neck. am i sobbing for some reason? i dont remember. I need water. i go to the dining table where cold drink bottles are kept filled with water. i take one and pour water till i feel like puking. i keep it aside, still uncapped and sit down on the couch. I look up at the ceiling and think of laughing at it for no apparent or hidden reasons, just laughing histerically, pulling out the fan from the ceiling, pulling out all the wires attached to it. i start breathing heavily. i close my eyes and keep breathing heavily. i got used to it in no time and felt normal again. automobile lights flashes through the window curtains again it was dark within no time. there is a sudden thought of emptiness inside me. it sounds like an empty tin can kicked by someone walking on the road. it rolls on the road towards the inclination, making a tinkering sound, stops after a while, and there it is, silence again, ever so unsympathetic, tormenting me from head to toe. i am in freaking pain. i turn on the music, loud, still loud, it stays there with me, longer, longer still. i drank water again till i felt like puking. i turn off the music. i am tired. i lie down on the mattress spread on the ground, folding myself into an embryo. i dont remember anything. i am asleep. it is still there. silence.

the apparition

stopped coming to my dreams, the lighted lampposts started dimming and the sound of footsteps started coming from the street. i know not, whether it was an indication of a new dawn, a new beginning or a lost soul, wandering around, the footsteps that i could still hear, few lost words in the general humming around. the restlessness cease to hount me and boredom had its grip so tight that i almost felt suffocating, the kind of suffocation you feel when everything smells the same around you and you loose the hope of seeing any new occurances of amusing wizardry, the king of suffocation that you fell when you are surrounded by a thousand mirrors and see yourself all around and still knowing that it is not you. you can hear the sound of time ticking away and the racing heart coming to a stop, or evaporate like spirits dropping on your palm, without a sizzle, without any noise.

the apparition stopped coming ot my dreams, as it had warned me so, but i never believed as i had never believed that it was an apparition after all.

the purple dust settled on her feathers and her lovely fish eyes, her voice breaking the silence as if a tray of twinkling wine glasses just hit the floor and her footfalls coming like hustling of wind chimes. the wind chimes lay still near the window, no morning breeze ever cares to pay her a visit anymore, nor are the gusts in the afternoon able to move them. the purple dust blew away and so she disappeared. she had warned me, but i would never believe her. the apparition stopped coming to my dreams.

..a normal day at office

"hello!" a voice said behind my back. "hello!" i greeted back without turning my head. thump! came the sound of the bag which she dumped on her desk. i looked through the corner of my left eye, without turning my head, still pretending to be deeply engrossed with the stuff on my monitor.

She started off with the morning ritual she performs everyday, touching the invisible feet of idols kept on the right corner of her cubicle, adjusting the fone among other things which is kept on the left, taking out her notebook and placing it at the center, fixing a few cables and dragging her chair to the right place and finally dumping herself into it with a sigh!. By this time, my eyes rolled back to the screen in front of me and i wait for one of us to break the silence. mostly it is she, asking me to look at some forwarded emaiil which is supposed to be good or funny in general sense. most of them are ok and a few horrible.

but i was not waiting for all this. aha! it came now. first sneeze of the day, followed by a burst of incessant sneezes which i never tried to keep count of. i just imagine all the tiny particles swarming in the air all around, creating a musky cloud which grows bigger as the day advances. i imagine the beautiful butterfly princess who moved around her garden with butterflies surrounding her wherever she goes. probably a slight deviation here.

arms wide open

oh..what dreamy eyes...like the twinkling of the sky on a cloudless night..filled with all the thoughts i like to hear but never a word which i could hear...those lips quevering like a branch on the old mountain tree..shaken..stirred by the rusty winds...a sweet smell of the last evening's perfume that you had put on...and the tears rolling down your eyes..oh yes..it had rained last night and the droplets on the leaves are falling down..slowly so ever...it could contain no longer...never so free...never so careless...never in despair and never without words on your lips...you dont need a shoulder to hide them...you dont need ears to listen to your words...like a whisper it spreads...and so has it shaken me...and never so before had i dreamt of you...and never the thought of having you by my side left me for a moment...you know where are the eyes all looking for you...you know where the arms are still wide open...still hoping...some day they will be filled

reasons...for what reasons?

how painful it is sometimes to find out reasons for things...and what for...to be forgotten the next day. the thing i am quoting below was something i got from some movie, but was apt to my mindset then,
"..there was a man who built a railway track. for some reasons he built the tracks in a straight line, without any curves in it. i dont know for what reasons he built it so. reasons are easily forgotten..".

damn cards...

the wind blew, came through the window towards my table, where lay a structure made of playing cards which i build in the morning. it was tall, broad and beautiful. now it lay on the table, just cards no structure. whom should i blame, the person who opened the window, the person who took the curtain for washing, the wind which had to blow this way only or myself who built the structure. i dont know. most likely no one. all i know is that i had a beautiful structure in the morning and now it all lay devastated on the table top. and as i see the cards fallen, helpless and ugly, my courage to rebuild it withers and fear of seeing it destroyed creeps in. how will it matter if i rebuild it or not...how will it matter if it stood or fell again....it will still be cards...which i wanted to give a shape...a shape which i wanted....the wind disliked...the person who opened the window disliked...and the person who took the curtain for washing disliked....the cards were helpless like me.

magic flowers

exhausted and drenched in sweat, she returned home. it was a long and tiring day for her but never so satisfying. as she lay down on the bed which she had bought with the bounty of money she had from the last summer's sale, she immediately fell asleep. it was early morning when she woke up. first sunrays of the day had seeped in through the unmended roof of the hut which had no windows, for she had heard that fortune escapes through windows. the earthen pot which she carries every day to sell yogurt lay near the foot of her bed. she always had kept two pots. one she kept hidden in the mud closet covered with jute sack, filled with milk and seeds of yogurt of the previous day. no cats ever knew about this secret of hers. they only knew about her generosity of the other pot. every night she would come back home and keep the leftover in the pot near the foot of her bed. always in the same quantity and same taste, for she had some magic of knowing how much it will sell everyday and she would prepare only a little extra. the cat would come in the night through the unlocked door, as she kept it every night. his arrival never disturbing her sleep, but she always found the leftover at the bottom of the pot gone in the morning and a feather of an unknown bird beside the pot. she started her day with her folded hands and eyes looking at the stone which contained the spirit of all her ancesters. then she would look into the pot and the feather, curse the unworthy cat which always left the feather of some bird which he might have killed, but she would preserve the feather like every lover preserves the roses of his first love.

as the sound of sweeping from the house beside hers is heard, she leaves her hut with the pot filled with fresh yogurt on her head. filling the streets of the village with her own meloncholic sound. children would come out of their homes, run after her, call her names, throwing mud pebbles at the pot on her head, missing all the shots, and she would never mind. as she walked from door to door, her steps growing slower and slower, million thoughts filling her mind, until she reaches the last of the house on that village street where her feet felt heavy, her eyes tired and only a small was left for the cat, she would rest. she would rest under the old gullar tree, laden with flowers of all colours, blue, purple, magenta, white, yellow and colours that they had never seen before. the most beautiful of all the trees in the village and villages around it. they told stories about it, worshipped it, lighted incandesence at its roots, tied threads around it and she always rested in peace after a tiresome day.

one day, she was resting under the shade of that tree and the day was sunny. there was no breeze and no rustling of leaves in the tree. everything lay still and barren and she slept under the tree, her pot lying beside her, containing little yogurt for the cat. It was a sunny day and nobody passed by for a long time, all the dogs on the street had taken shelter in some shade and there was no sound to be heard. A purple flower broke off from the branch of the tree and fell in the pot.

The next morning when she woke up, said her prayer with closed eyes and looked at the pot beside the foot of her bed. there was no feather left by the cat that day and the small amount of yogurt which she always left for the cat lay there at the bottom of the pot. she felt worried and left for the day's work. that day when she returned after selling, earning a little extra from what she earned everyday till now, she found her pot still filled to the same level where she had started. no matter how many extra doors she knocked that day, she was not able to sell whole of it. she was worried and she could not stay longer under that tree. she left for home and slept, waking up next day with the hope that everything would be same. but it wasn't. no cats came by and she had no feathers to add to her treaser. she sat under the gullar and weapt her heart out. but nothing changed. day by day her earning increased but she never returned home selling whole of yogurt which she had made. she mended her house and made two windows in the house with the fortune she earned, but she lived worried and grew tired of those worries day by day. one afternoon, when she was sitting under the tree, she remembered the day when she had dreamt of a flower dropping in her pot from the branches of that tree. she cursed the tree for that day and for that flower, she cursed it for bringing her sorrow and worry. she cried out aloud, " o unworthy and charismatic tree! were you ashamed of my ugly but happy life? or did you want to see the whole world as beautiful and rich as you? but you forgot that your beauty is incomplete if there remains no ugliness as me. your kindness has no meaning without my curse. your beauty has marred your mind and made you insane. you want to see everything good and fair and rich and beautiful. but you have sacrificed my contended self. you have brought me great sorrow. you have killed my beloved cat and stolen his feathers. i wish you will never bear any flowers upon you. i wish you be laden with ugly fruits. like my pot of yogurt which never gets empty now, but earns me no satisfaction, no one will ever see your flowers now, but you will be always full of fruits."

the children on the streets remembered the tree thereafter as a haunted tree with no flowers, which lay there barren and deserted, asked by no one, watered by no one since the day it was cursed. no one in the village had seen a single flower on that tree and they left it deserted because they considered it ugly without flowers, covered only with small berries like fruit, infected by the curse of demons of ill luck. The old lady would still rest under the same tree and no flowers fell in her pot thereafter. And they would share their solitude for a while. she, always tired and the tree always watchful and meloncholic with no flowers on it, only fruits.