ON 'RAIN'

It rained here today. Started sometime around 5:45-6:00 am, and that got me frustrated because I was at home and I had classes recommencing from today, and my first class was at 8, which meant that this rainfall could spoil the whole show and I could miss a couple of classes because that’s how buses over here work. And considering I’m someone who’s always hated the rain, always finding a reason to complain about it, I thought my mood could be no better the whole day, what with wet clothes, and wet spare clothes and a wholly wet me.

I guess I thought wrong.

It didn’t rain the fifteen minutes I took to go to the bus-stop nearest to home, it didn’t rain the first half-hour of my journey (that ought to have been done in half the time, but got stretched) and then it began. I liked the first few minutes, when nothing crept inside the window to find my clothes or my glasses, but then I found that this wind was bad, sort of antagonistic, and all it wanted to do was to act against me, and the rain speeded up, got my right sleeve wet in no time at all, and I felt grumpy, really grumpy. I looked out the window, wondering if I’d be sane if in case I tried to curse the rain, something that can’t hear me, (helps if you’ve been cursing the world for as long as I’ve been: deaf ears do nothing to you) and that sort of made me see the big picture. White noise. Streamlines of flow that are actually distinct drops. Wow, this piece of shit was making me poetic! I smiled. I smiled, not because I enjoyed the rain, which is a rare occasion (Done that before, hence ‘rare’). I smiled because I thought of you.

I wished this girl were here. I know I did nothing but see the tiniest of signs of a rain-lover, but I guess I have this mind that’s potent enough to magnify by a thousand times, and in it you were this peacock (I know peacocks are male, but I don’t know if peahens dance in the rain) who can’t stay inside when it rains, who needed just half a moment to spread your tail-feathers and dance around, frolic in the air, and I thought that this rain could be your cure, something that can bring you out of the most devastated states of mind, causing true happiness every single time it came, and that made me glad, that made me feel really appreciative of this thing that I’ve hated for so long, because it’s strong enough to gladden your day, something that I found only sunshine to be capable of, because I’ve never thought about anyone but me, and sunshine, even the most terribly hot ones, always manage to make me happy, thinking about clear skies, cool winds, energetic running, lots of sweat, tiredness that’s bliss. I guess that’s my booze.

I looked up to the sky again. This wasn’t a steady rain, it was worse than intermittent, I could see a lot of clear patches all around, but there was also this really dark portion in the sky that suggested ages and ages of downpour to come, but surprisingly, I saw nothing but the blue sky that crept out of some places, and I found that amazing. Amazing, because it’s weird how I, how one can be nothing but optimistic even in the grumpiest of moods, how I can’t imagine a scenario turning worse than what it is now. I didn’t know how the wind was blowing, I didn’t even care to see if that space was opening up or closing down, if that was the calm I felt yesterday or a calm to come, all I felt was a second’s relief that this wasn’t going to last forever, after all. It’s foolish, if you look at it in one way, because it’s like I’m trying to alter something that’s going to happen anyway by believing otherwise, and that depressed me, that, to me, was similar to religion, to superstition, and I thought for a split second that John Mayer was right all along when he posed the question of, “Is there anyone who ever remembers changing their minds from the paint on a sign?” and when he sang,

“We’re never going to beat this

if belief is what we’re fighting for...”

Nevertheless, I did get completely drenched, and dirty (potholes, mud everywhere, “isn’t love like that?”, yeah I remembered everything) but I didn’t feel even a bit cold (I’m clearly lying here, but it’s the truth in an ‘inside’ sense) I felt warmer, rather, as though every drop of rain that collected on me turned to a drop of heat and I felt like I was walking in the sun, where everything’s dry and everything is warm, everything is happy and there’s no fear at all. I looked inside and smiled. I guess that’s what you could do to me.

I thought of writing this as a poem, because I felt that a write-up could dampen the whole lot of it, but I guess that’s how I felt I was perfectly in place, at home, here. Because ‘damp’ was exactly what I was looking for.

THE TRUTH.

Jacques Derrida once said (maybe he says that a lot, but I’ve heard it only once, so it’s ‘once’ to me) that in order to reveal oneself completely, one has to turn ‘indecent’ a little, because ‘decency’ is nothing but a different way to spell ‘diplomacy’, and I guess I’ve been diplomatic all along, or at least the whole of my previous post. Being tight-lipped, cryptic, unwilling. I found I can’t stay like that for long, I’m not a gentleman you see, so I find I’ve got to get home soon, get back to being what I am: Indecent.

The previous post was about how ‘she’ is the one who takes me through days, through nights, through tight spots, and even free rides for that matter. Well, I wasn’t lying exactly, but I sure was being off-track, saying stuff that’s slightly far from what I wanted to mean and that’s basically a precautionary measure, because it’s not my interests that I want to safeguard, I guess I don’t want to taint anyone. But I find that in the process of keeping the city clean, I am the one who’s rolling in the mud and playing with all kinds of shit, and I think it’s time, I think it’s time to clean myself, not at the expense of the rest of the world, but yeah, I need to rid myself of some dirty, prickly conscience, so here’s my bath.

I didn’t meet her, at all. What happened can hardly be called a ‘meeting’, I mean, I doubt if you ‘meet’ everyone you see face-to-face, I’d then be meeting a million everyday and that’s absurd, really, because I find myself to be someone who meets no one but myself comprehensively every day, and anyway, I didn’t meet her at all. But she’s amazing, beyond doubt. Made me wish I could write like her, and perhaps that’s just because I read the whole of her in a day, and what I read could’ve taken her a whole year to write and in that case I’m always the faster writer, which adds to my productivity in a big way, but she is amazing. She shook me. And I wasn’t certain about my sanity over the next hour, or the hour after the next. No, I’m not lying, it’s just… been a while, you know. Maybe I’m hyping her up, maybe I’m completely understating her, making her sound cheap, but I don’t know. I don’t know, man, I need some help over here.

Someone told me I’ve a tabooed age I need to look out for. I see no point, really, I think I do what I do because I see sensibility in it. Leaving aside the fact that me being liked is a joke in itself, I think being liked by someone younger than me is something that needs to be thought about, I personally think there’s a slavish accompaniment in the way girls like stronger ‘men’ or bigger boys or similar people, you know. And I can’t bring myself to being that, I doubt if I can ever be an idol, I don’t want to be an idol, I just want to be recognized for just what I am, and I think she’d give that to me. My ‘taboo’, you know. There’s never a gradient separating her from me, it’d no longer be an overall cuteness, or handsomeness or colour of my eyes, or the way I write, I think it comes down to just one thing. Honesty. And I would give anything for some honesty in return. I think that’s it, that she’d like me for being honest, for being frontal, straight-forward, yet insightful, and giving her everything she’d like, enjoying every little thing she does. It’s cool, you know, very… Jazzy. Me being dreamy-eyed while she sports a half-smile, showing an inside in conflict, both admiring me and well as staying cynical, emotions hiding behind a pair of dark glasses.

And I’d do anything for that half-smile. And though the glasses are sure an allure, I would only be more glad if she smiled without them.

ON 'HER'. AGAIN.

I’m seven years old. Not yet seven, in fact, and I’m taking this bus to school and back, and the bus in picture is not rickety, I’m not writing an indigenous novel for heaven’s sake, it’s fair enough and everything is fair enough, and it’s crowded so that some need to stand while the rest of them get to sit, and I’ve my turns, but I’m someone who likes to sit when I stand and stand when I sit, yes I do remember that. Maybe everyone’s like that, but I’m saying it, so I’m like that and I don’t know about everyone, because they’ve either not said it or I’ve not listened, and anyway, this is when I see myself standing and I’m standing next to this girl, all pale, blue-eyed, sweet-looking, and I’m trying to get her to look at me, my problem lying in the fact that she’s three years older and a foot taller, but she’s just two grades away. ‘Just’. And I try every single day to get her to look at me, to get her to talk to me, although I hardly know what I could engage her in, she could possibly know to add four digits together, but big deal, I could do that too, I’m supposed to have been the ‘prodigy’, but maybe she’s one too and maybe she could do things that I can’t do and the fact that I can’t might drive me farther from her, and that’s ironical, because I sense no closeness yet to fear about getting far.

And that there’s this day when I started as usual, singing popular songs in my own way to get her to look this way, something from this ‘up and coming’ musician called A.R.Rahman, and that I not only got her to look at me, but to smile at me, and to cry almost immediately, and stoop to my level, kiss my cheek, and tell me before she got down that this was to be the last time I’d be seeing her, and that she’d miss me forever, and that I can’t forget her or her name, though I wouldn’t be revealing it over here, because I’m still not sure that she’s not a figment of my imagination, strengthened by persistent belief, those are not unknown; they’re almost trivial, sort of out of context. And I needed to mention her over here, because there’s this new somebody who reminded me so much about her and that’s merely a similarity in the way and extent of tears I’m made to shed because of either of them.

“I could be dying thinking about you, but you might not know that I exist.”

I thought I’d write this post about the ‘older’ concept, but I thought I’d shine some light on the importance of a ‘push’ to keep one going. I guess this could look, to you, to be a whole digression into something that’s got nothing to do with what I’ve said till now, but no it’s not and no you’re not right in thinking so, for what I said exactly fits with what I’m going to say and there’s this continuity standing tall, indestructible.

The destination is hardly alluring. I mean, what’s the use in something that’s always there and something that you’d see right from the first step and you just go on, going ahead with ‘your way’ till you reach it, and then it’s ‘Hurray’ and you get the prize, but you think about it when you’ve got it in hand, you try to retrospect and try to figure out what actually got you going, and you find that all along, you never gave the prize a thought even, and it’s always something different, something out of the way, something virtually unconnected, that made your path interesting, made it fun. I guess that’s when you really, really think about her.

Heck, I’m the world’s biggest liar.

I’m not even halfway through, and I find myself unable to think about anyone else. Maybe I took the liberty to immerse myself in this ‘sea’, solely because I didn’t buy my tickets, but I did think I didn’t find the show interesting and that that’s because I’m not in the show at all, and I’m thinking about Blues music in an Opera house and that’s hazardous for either form, because defeat in one case doesn’t imply victory in the other, it’s just a split of defeat or the whole of it, coming from 200 percent. So what’s my point, what am I saying? I don’t know, I lost track, I guess that’s what multi-tasking does to someone, it always takes its toll on all things you’re doing, only that you wouldn’t know it for sure, it’s never the obvious. But when you do such things like writing and eating and watching a film together, I guess this chocolate sure can’t remind you enough of her, and neither would the Dark Knight.

She took me through four days. And I have this really bad habit of always wanting a guardian angel if I ever get a whiff of one, and I also like to say ‘please’. Even though I find it never helps these days. Not even with a couple of tears in the eye. ‘Damp’ never looks dainty.

SHIT.

I thought I'd write a poem and a pop-song. While the poem is out, the song still stays inside. Here's what I had to say, and I don't have to say anymore, for it's self-explained. More than sufficiently.

It irks me to see you fade,
when a while ago
you were all that I wanted,
and the hours that passed,
and the parts of me you passed,
giving some, taking some,
turning you into something I wanted
only to be rid of;
a breath of Frankenstein.

Yet you give me pleasure:
of riddance; of relief;
if rejection does to you
what it does to me,
how come you part so quietly,
letting yourself be drowned
by music, by words
that I hum if I don't hear;
of a love song
that I fought hard to learn,
and forgot in a flash of joy?

Are you sinister, though?
Do let me know,
so I could then believe,
that you look at me with disgust,
the same disgust
with which I look at you now,
before I close the door,
and turn around and walk away,
never to return, until I'm full again.

But it matters not,
whether you are or you aren't,
for either way,
I still get to learn from you,
my most crucial lesson:
that I should never do to her
what I do to you;
that I should never dream,
for dreams aren't dreams,
when they come true...

ASSASSIN

Since I've already established that my life is a bunch of phases, one leading to another and the other to another 'other' and so on, I guess I don't need to establish the ground I've already established again, because then there'd be an additional ground that's actually the same, and hence, having made sure that I start with something completely absurd, I go on to my subject material. It's an observation, actually, and I've happened to find that while this 'writer' me is quick in changing phases and recognizing them too, the 'reader' me finds it hard to keep up pace and hence there're periods of lag, and periods of uncertainty, and it's always resolved in the end, but all the same it's a late realization, and that's what I'm dealing with right now: A recent discovery of what I've been in quite a while. Nothing big, exactly, though. Nothing philosophical, yet quite substantial all the same, because it's been a change in my basic form, the form I adapt to write things, and analysis on a personal level has shown me what's caused the change too. So it's not like it's a mystery, it's just that it only needs to be revealed for the picture to be complete. So I guess I'm just playing Scooby-Doo here.

I've been repeating lines. I don't know what poetic device that is, but I've been stressing things over and over, and I think that's kind of contributing to a pop-music feel, than the usual folk-acoustic strum I write to. It's not a change in life-pattern that I see, merely a change in personal trends, and that brings me to what precisely caused it, you know. 'Assassin'. By John Mayer, five minutes out of his 45 minute ride in form of 'Battle Studies', and honestly, it's one of the most exhilarating songs I've listened to, and I believe it's got the second-best beginning to a John Mayer song next to 'Belief', and an all-round show at that. Got me face to face with Steve Jordan, and I guess I could be begging him for autographs if I were 14, and since I'm not, I guess I'd just be blogging about it. Fair bass guitar, and a total riot from John who walks on a tweak of a solo that only tells me that he needs nothing to write something like that. Sounds so effortless, you know. Simple words, hard-hitting all the same, I think you need to get a hold of this.

"I should have turned around
and left before
the sun came up again,
but the sun came up again..."

I'm not testifying against myself as having totally ripped off a hit single, I guess I hardly mind because (again) no sane soul would tell me I'm being unoriginal, because heck, I think people would have to make-out what I say to be saying that, or well... I don't think they have to, to do that, I think that's what people are. But honestly, this song was all the way with me, running around inside my head as I thought of 'Night-time', which ought to have been a Nick Drake influence, but I think it's all for good, because a Nick Drake influence to a John Mayer beat is like a Charolastra's dream come true. Pop and poetry, combined together and no one's there to see the same. Well, they're there, but I don't think they'd see it coming. Even when it's staring at them, straight in the face. Sun-Eyed. Furious.

Here's a bit of 'NIGHT-TIME' to end this post:

"...'cause it's Night-Time,
when you should be holding tight to
stolen sights, and dying's denied;
and it's the only time,
that you don't have to be with her,
to be with her: it's the night."

Well, I don't 'steal sights', they just come my way, but I guess the effect's to understand that there's nothing out of the world in a dream, except the weirdness in entanglement and the whole 'connections', you know. And I love my dreams, it's the only place I wouldn't die and I'm not being Utopian saying that, I'm just enjoying a piece of nicety that I'm offered anyway, and face it: You would too, if you liked to live and not just hang around. It's sad to be one of the second kind. So close to the third, yet in no way 'accessible'. Period.

ON 'PURPOSE'

What makes me write something? Trying to hit it straight and not talk in circles, I’d say that I take things in hand just to prove a point to my most ardent follower, probably the only one who’s involved enough to like what I’ve got to say and hate me for every piece of bullshit (although that’s not happened often) thrown his way, and I know I’m kind of getting obvious, enough to have lost the bang this ought to have produced, but won’t now: Myself. I guess that’s primary, I don’t see myself as being a pacifier for someone other than me, and when it concerns my interests towards myself, I see myself as nothing more than precisely that: Someone who tries to get a good name, only that what’s required is not a commonplace kiss-up act, but rather a show of quality that would be appreciated if genuine, even if pathetic. Coming to think about it, I don’t think ‘pathetic’ has much to do over here.

Writing for writing’s sake, and to rid oneself of the itch, tell you what: These sound so good. So tidy, so convenient. Easy to hide behind, big blankets despite being sickeningly thin, not going to help you bear a chill, let alone anything more adverse. And this doesn’t mean I’m going to scoff at everyone who claims otherwise, I’ve kind of taken this stand where I swore to myself that I won’t get beyond a ‘personal level’ and that means I wouldn’t claim to anything about anyone more than a majestically tiny fraction of whatever I claim to know about myself, so I just try to maintain a little diplomacy here and tell the world that at least ‘I’, the insensitive writer, cannot look at any benefit that’s not material, and that’s not an implication that I won’t work for anything less than a hefty stack of green, it’s just that I need to feel something add up someplace inside me to be able to bring out whatever it dislocated, and pushed out. And yeah, I’m just trying to be awfully metaphorical here, and what I essentially intended to say is this: If I try to write about a girl, or something that she’s doing to me, (from a considerable distance, so don’t make me prove you wrong) it’s never going to be just for the sake of letting it out, you know, never for ‘scratching where it itches’ or trying to find the heart of it. I guess I’ll always want my work read by that designated girl, and appreciated by her (which she would, if in case she read) and produce sufficiently constructive outcomes. And yeah, I sure can dream, I’m someone who wrote a lyric about it.

“And one day,

I’m gonna find you beneath this cloud,

while above I’ve got myself, sorted out,

and when I do:

I’ll forget about how

I used to be so vain,

assigning you to all halls of fame;

and I would surely laugh all night,

‘cause I’ve had this thing called ‘second sight’…”

And a purpose might not always be obligatory towards the receiver, I don’t always need to hail people or things and wish they could read it so that they’d appreciate the interest I show, no, it’s not like that. Sure, I’d want the one behind my words to know she’s caused it; one or ‘ones’, you know, it’s often not just a single beneficiary, and even if my opinion on her or on the whole fraternity is derogatory, that’s most certainly not my stand about her or the lot, that’s just what I thought was absolutely right at that point of time, and maybe I find it right even now, or maybe I don’t and all I’m going to do is have a laugh with her (or them) at how ridiculous I had sounded a while before. Truth is, I don’t know what I’d do, because I’ve not been there before, and she’s not taken me there before, and I know, I’m just trading blames with nothing here, and anyway, my point is: I write stuff because I want them read, and I won’t write about a flower or a dog because it won’t read it for sure, while a girl ‘might’. Or so I like to think.