Nostalgia

The other day, we had a long some-software-blah-blah session in office. As far as I got, it was for managing projects… now most of it didn’t interest me and I don’t like feeling stupid. So I stopped listening. However, snatches of “You can do THAT with just a click”, “Everyone can define rights”, “Wow, that’s so powerful” took me back in time a long, long way…


I have always been an organized person. When we didn’t all have personal computers, we had files. My files were stashed, colour-coded and alphabetically stacked, in neat rows. When there were projects, there were paper, scraps, scissors, tape, adhesive, and a lot of yelling. The sense of accomplishment was immense, something that click-click-clicketty-click will never achieve. Every file, every project copy, every scrap book was treasured.

Files that were catalogued and cross-classified would be found in seconds, librarians in school knew where a particular book was before we could finish saying the entire name. There was ink, fountain-pens, refills and calligraphy. There was pride… and now, ink is probably a hue and calligraphy, a font.

I miss the paper days and dread the taking over of human intelligence and emotions by mammoth computing machines…

Erosion

Trembling in my arms,

Your fragile heart beats.

I watch it break sometimes,

And wonder what else I might give.

As the stars watched

Your soul lay bare, hollow

Wisps of desire haunt the night

In your words, in my dreams.

Hearing us both, you say

Is someone?

Does she take

The shape of my words?

Your rivers of tears

Erode the pebbles of my mind…

Rituals

Little, seemingly unimportant, acts done in the same order, at the same every day, bring a lot of order in my life.

I have had the same breakfast for eight months in office now, and not for lack of choice. I sandwich my omlette in my toast in the same way, I use the same coffee machine, I follow the same order of going about in the café during breakfast, every single day. Now the actions have become automatic, I do not need to think while I do any of this.
I shower before I go to bed at night. Yes, I know, that is unusual, but I cannot fall asleep until I do. Every night, it is the same order of events, replayed. This, in turn, helps me go over my day and plan the next. It helps me take stock of life.
When I get ready in the morning too, I am swift and I know exactly what goes with what and what else goes with the previous ‘whats’. It is because I become like a wound-up doll, executing the same steps of the doll-dance.
The Sufis believe that all of existence is a dance, and I completely agree. The steps are actually sequenced and if we manage to follow them, we get past most routine activities without even realizing that we did. Rituals are good mundane. Rituals are good.

Running Backwards

Tracing your wounds
Back to where they belong.
Scars
Leading into one another,
Forming roads that lead backwards.
Falling, falling through space
Through time,
Through words,
Into her eyes.
Splash.
Tears form puddles on those roads
Without milestones
Endless, infinite,
Like the songs
She heard with you.
Your tears,
Silent
As they mingle with mine
In infinite waiting,
Endless, within and without,
Like those roads
That lead backwards.

Papillion-ed

On Friday evenings, the parking lot and the place where the buses are parked are a battle zone. People, having put in more hours of work during the week than they’d like to, are always rushing pell-mell as if this is the last weekend they’ll ever get to live. It is almost amusing, how they barely glance at the people to who they wave goodbye every other day of the week.

Everyone’s got something else or the other on their minds. Last Friday, however, a very faith-filled thing happened. There was a man walking towards the buses in front of me. I didn’t notice him until he slowed down, veered off-course and stooped to pick something up.

It was a dying butterfly, the symbol of frailty. It was a tiny quivering mass in his large palm. The man then proceeded to slowly meander through the umpteen people, diagonally cutting through the parking lot (yes, I followed him) and placed the butterfly on the rain-drenched grass under a white-flowered tree. Fitting, I’d say, for something so beautiful. No one else noticed, no one stopped to save a dying butterfly from being trampled upon.

We have become too busy these days. But that butterfly did well to be found by him, and he was made a better man by that act. I get to hold on to faith. Kudos to the butterfly-man!

Loss

I tend to feel most emotions on an extreme level. And even though I have consciously tried to tone the feelings down, I can’t seem to.
Loss, I have felt, as a void only after a certain period of time has passed. Initially, however, the feeling has been the exact opposite. It is that of a rising swell, like a huge wave of water, which rises from deep within and fills me to the brim. The feeling is akin to being in a closed space and water levels rising to fill it, eventually going down under it. Here that closed coffin-like space is my body. The wave is heavy and strong in its pressure against my skin, and it is all I can do to hold it in. If I try to let it out, it is just a dry, hollow sob.
As time rolls on, this feeling is replaced by one of needle-like pain, in pin-points. It is, as if, someone is inside me, jabbing outwards… and with every sting, remembrance of the lost, hurt in hot white flashes. Every minute is filled with a buzz of torture, of yearning and pain, of indignation and wrath, all directed within.

After a while yet, void. A void that will never fill, no matter how good the replacement is…

Protean

Shifting

Like clouds on a windy day,

The ephemeral map,

Charting changing distances on the skies,

Like the places you took me to.

Infinite

Like the waves on the shores,

Receding only to swallow up,

Those paths mirrored across the sky,

Like memories forgotten.

Palpable

Like dew on forest leaves,

Raining down in gusty throes,

And disappearing into eternity,

Like the look in my eyes,

Where mysteries lie…