to Annie, without Love

Annie, 

Have you ever lost a Moth when you looked at another? Or have you lost them both not knowing which one to look at? 

How many candles do you have, burning, in your room? 

What if the best you could recollect of death is a shadow flickering on your brazen wall; where ‘Death’, at that time, couldn’t have meant death at all for you just didn’t witness it? 

Between two insignificances, which one would you pick, to caress into meaning? 

There is a spider on a cobweb in my bathroom as well, sitting pretty on top of a mix of flies, dragonflies, ants and, yes, of course, moths – unsung heroes of a lost cause. There is a spider in everyone’s bathroom, isn’t there? More than one, in some cases, as though they symbolize the extent of predatory tendencies kept in check, realized but in conflict with mortal fear as we take the place of both assailant and victim at the same time. 

Just like falling in love. 

Like when you claim your ‘love’ for a person when you don’t know for sure if you really mean it but then you want them to know what’s going on with the hope that they, if not help ease you out of your discomfort, would get down and suffer with you instead. In ‘love’; ‘love’ as sadism, ‘love’ as treachery, ‘love’ as the single most selfish emotion in the world. 

Like how you derive the pleasure of existence outside of yourself; where the pleasure is felt not by the Moth, but by you, the Monster – the heartless machine that would pump its engines with the juice of lives that pass you by in encounters, both chanced and planned. 

If only for a second you sat on the Moth and saw through its eyes, you’d swap your candle for fluorescence to let it live. And you’d let it leave, because there’s nothing you can do to make it stay and death isn’t an option – not its death, not yours. You’d let it leave like how you’d have let everyone else leave or have learnt to, the insects of your life who’d have fed on your glow, whom you’d have nurtured, whom you’d have melted in front of before having to pull yourself together and collect yourself back again to get a new candle up – fresh, but recycled. 

That, or you could’ve fooled yourself with fluorescence and the flower that said ‘she loves me not’ (she never did) when the last petal fell. 

I read your work. I hated it. It was beautiful, but I hated it still. You can’t make me sad unless I have faith in you to make me happy sometime. I can’t let you do that to me. I shouldn’t have – for which reason, I hate myself more for having shown to you my naked self, not a strand of hair on my chest; naked thought and emotion – further naked. It’s like I spoke to but a mere ghost of you and desired more, only to find that you weren’t even there to begin with. 

It’s vivid when I recollect the time that I spent, under your influence; when I saw you sit there as you told me your story, shifting in your seat and glancing at the door all the time and I pretended to the best of my ability that I couldn’t see that because I had turned my back on you to make you some coffee, looking over my shoulder to check. And then it was like I came outside, disheartened, as I made this excuse that there wasn’t any sugar when, in reality, it was that I felt you didn’t deserve the sweetness of one who really cared. You didn’t get your coffee, I didn’t get my kiss. That tasted like fairness. 

The classic example of a reader’s dissatisfaction with ‘mere words’, if I can call it that. Where, in a toss between your garden and mine, I would ask for yours any day. If only you would let me. 

I suffered with the bounty of your mind inside my head, not knowing what to do with all the gold that I held, not wanting to spend, not wanting to count; dreading the fact that it would all disappear as it’s bound to. Not wanting to melt and cast into an image of my own in the meantime, where I know I’d fancy you to be the Bear that I hugged to sleep on the planet that I was, a million moons back – innocence. 

And now, dear Annie, I want you to burn in the black of mine. And I hope you burn a sunset Orange in a Purple haze, for that’s a colour I would ascribe you to. 

hatred and helplessness, 

Karthik

My, oh My, oh My

If only you were in the midst of my mind where I keep you alive because I need you around. You wouldn’t be talking about ‘things moving too fast in life’, then. 

I wanted to draw a picture of you and I couldn’t. Perhaps it was the thought that I had your image perfected inside my head and ready to replicate would have you admire me more; as though you didn’t admire me enough without me having to do that. 

But then, what do I admire you for? 

It’s not something that I’m not aware of and yet can’t explain. It’s the voice in my head that sounds like David Gray when he goes: 

“There’s something in your eyes 

That makes me smile... 

Oh, yeah.” 

There IS something in your eyes that makes me smile. Like I saw the glitter on the cover of those Pokemon cards I was caught stealing and got slapped for in seventh Class. In them, I find my desire to be a better person. In agitation to be more mellow. More nostalgic, more beautiful, more insightful, more fun; more of ‘me’ than I could ever be and I still want to go further. As if better versions of myself are all that you asked for. 

And that is because I don’t know what you want. 

This is my most fragmented narrative of all and I find it in order; in adherence to my mind’s sequence, a place where I’ve got it all mapped out – a plan so frantic whose potency I can’t keep pace with. A place where I get lost often; where the last I remember is holding your hand as you left me by the street on my way back home. Two kilometres in a head filled with you, in street-art, in car-headlights and the eyes of an occasional dog that I had to fight to avoid; that so terrifies me. In the most hazardous of times, most comforted. 

“If only life were like ‘Before Sunrise’,” I told you, if you remember. “I would kiss you on a roller-coaster with the sun in your eyes.” 

I couldn’t say the second part to you and have you scandalized. 

Why is it that I can never like someone and feel comfortable standing? What is it about attraction that it’s got to be so discomforting, compulsively, putting me in a whirlwind that sends me spinning to an Oz of my own where they’ve put up posters of you, your smile in red, your face in yellow and your eyes in sunset orange, lined by scanty kajal that you never knew how to put. Like you were the proud drawing of my six-year old self that I called ‘Dollie’ and showed my parents with a naughty little smile on my face. 

Where your hair was green and your retainer blue, for I only had a six-colour box where I had used up everything else. And I found you beautiful like that. 

If only you heard the things I said to those I complained about you. You’re the stomach ache that has me starve – to eat would mean to replace you for that’s where you reside, soothing against the acid; tickling me from within. We tried my heart where you were cramped for space. I suggested we move you elsewhere. And I suffer from my suggestion, only too sweetly. 

I’m clearer now. It’s like I’ve woken up from waters that you pushed me into, off my bed as I rolled over the side and lay sprawled on the floor; drenched, but never cold. I sleep without air-conditioning. I don’t remember if I’ve told you this before. 

I’ve found I can’t write when I’ve lost track of myself in my scramble for space and time (with you); I had to turn some pages to get familiar so I could write these things that I thought about you. And I had my hand on my mouth with a smile on my face and my head shaking in disbelief as I read these lines that I once wrote in a distant-sounding song. I had called it ‘Shame.’ 

“...and we’ll make love on sunset-streams, 

Splashing in the sand...” 

I was outraged; embarrassed that I had written/thought something like this before. Like I could pull my shirt over my head so no one can see my face turn red.

Look at how little you’ve made me.

SECRETS - II

This isn’t a commemoration. This is second-time honesty. 

I’ve been crazy the past few days and I even know why. I can’t say it though. I wouldn’t even hint at it, which is ironic because the very intention of this post is to do just that. Or to remind myself of a pitiful state of mind that I’m already aware of with enough of a dose to incite retaliation, intimidate my senses and to threaten them to cooperation with the fleeting vision of a doleful ‘or else.’ Not gruesome death as a ransom note that would sign my own release papers, but eventuality as the brick-red wall that grows with my efforts to climb it. I think I’m trying to put in words the inimitable agony of what it takes to ‘snap out of it.’ Which is what I’d try to do with the rest of this post as well, at the end of which I shall either have ‘snapped out of it’, or have admitted my failure to do so. 

The last time I shared my secret with you, I told you how I anticipated the time I would see you on screen and ask my mother to quit it with the Divas and take a look at mine. That song-and-dance routines never change was the bottomline where I wished for your intervention in that hour-long slot. And yesterday was the first time I felt threatened by that notion. 

Not that drastically– it’s not like I’ve never had to eat my words before, I think that’s primarily why I try to cook them up this well, so I wouldn’t have trouble eating them back in poor reception. That, of course, is a cooked-up statement as well. Words aren’t vomit where the mind is a takeaway counter that rings with the bell at every summon of thought delivering itself like a tasteful salad that’s both healthy and cold so you could relish it and it wouldn’t burn you and yet leave you like it should – warm in the heart and satiated in the belly. I’m going to go have one in an hour from now. 

Ah, if only life were as simple as a train of thought that I could take to the poles and bring back home loaded with Christmas gifts. Then I would have you gifted a record that played this song for you that I’d already have written and kept aside for the moment to come, except I wouldn’t remember it and you wouldn’t have expected it and both of us would be pleasantly surprised. You, with my intention, and me, with my ability, rediscovered. Too clichéd? 

And it’s not that I’m incapable of poetry. It’s that I despise it. Poetry I write for you is inevitably mine. I’d be a verbal exhibitionist encroaching upon you, puffed-up with the rise you gave me, wielding a baton you would never take in hand even though you might appreciate it from a distance. Appreciate and not be alarmed, because you’d find me beautiful, naked; because I’d have found you beautiful and I’d show you as I saw you through my eyes that made you so. Your beauty could be twenty two, about as old as you are, but I shall have made it twelve years old, sexless and naive. Part of me calls it 'inspiring consent', but then I hear a wry little voice saying 'Rape.' I'm no predator.

I can’t tell you, I can’t write you a poem, I can’t sing you a song, I can’t make you a movie that has us both as characters where the one that’s me tells the one that’s you exactly how he feels, and I can’t do that because I don’t know what would happen after that. Would you still smile the smile that you smile so often? Would you deem me misguided and spin me around so I could find my way, except I’d spin myself around and head back to you again? Would you be offended? Would you be kind? Would you shame me with your sympathy? Would you honour me with your anger? Would you dust me off with condescension – the air of one who’s seen much better, much worse that my adequacy wouldn’t impact you enough? 

I don't know if you made me, I don't know if I brought it upon myself, but for the first time in a long, long while, I'm speechless; clueless. For the first time in a long, long while, I ache. And for the first time in a long, long while, I write.

summons

Another paranoid piece of messed-up fiction that I came up with. Messed up because it's half untrue. And don't even ask me about the other half, okay?

not another word that fails

to get my mind a mind divide;

like dirt upon a standard spade

that digs out everything I find

in my hand this diamond held,

sparkling in the night that shines

the air around, of shoeshine self,

in a winter that it left behind

so wind it up, I need the hour

of water cans in garden ride;

you know I’d use it, and use it good,

if you could get back to my life

'Little Rhymes'? Oh, I don't care where this goes. I just wanted it outside my head so I could see it new; see you new and find something out of that. Let me not state the obvious (unless you'd guess it anyway).

tomorrow

Guess I didn’t quite ask myself the obvious, but why is this an important thing to have written about? And for once, you know, I guess I could answer that. Because there’s this feeling of being too much in a dream that one forgets to be real? No it’s not an ‘Inception’ thing, I’m not one for it, but it’s just… everything happens in a dream, everything’s within reach that the fight of reality almost turns absurd and postponing becomes the thing to do.

tomorrow

crossroads up a road ahead,

count of miles tonight in bed;

a shorter foot and two a pace,

I’d get there even at half the rate

farther with the fight of fog,

frozen to the closest spot;

peeking through the ice around,

with warmth I sent to sit it out

same about the state of her,

half my thoughts, digested words;

struggle spent to make the plane,

and steal a smile and know her name

staring at the mountain wrought,

digging in and digging round;

a minute off my mind, withdrawn,

from the song called ‘do it now’

gutter stench on surface felt,

on every moment passing by;

I take today to wish me well,

tomorrow’s when I live my life

yesterday

yesterday I found this thought,

to write it in, to write it out;

reminded me of fallen stars,

of folded papers, golden clouds

I stand myself in the thick of rain,

hope to find you there again;

in water with my mind awash,

I close my eyes, and that is all.

I might frown at the finale, I’m getting too obsessed, kind of. Maybe that’s wrong, but I don’t know, maybe that’s exactly what’s right about me? But I hate this, you know. Not how I sometimes defy it, but I hate how I live exactly what I write at times, and how they’re almost always exactly traumatic. And the strangest, yet most obvious thing is that I’d never want to do anything about it. To ‘YOU’.

miss B

Well, I actually began this to be something else which I wouldn’t reveal at this point of time (mainly because there’s no real suspense as such) but then again, I just went where my drowsiness took me, and it was almost 2 am and ‘Back to You’ and stuff.

Calories to cook this up,

a night of her to burn it all;

wonder where the hell she is,

the morning finds her

good and gone

and you wanted me

to show my hand,

to twist it up, to sniff her out;

breaking down a pot of plant

to find the seed,

to shine your sun

Well, what if she’s too good for that,

what if there’s no candle-stain?

What if she’s not fussed enough

to prove her mettle, write her name?

Call the thief

and catch her too,

frame the suspect from the start;

call her cheeky,

call her brutal,

call her rude, but you know what?

You never had a shred of her,

you’d never find you never did;

a window at a solid turn,

its glasses painted, the world unlit

and looking out on towns so strange,

fast, polluted, river-made;

you bind the cord that ties your tongue,

doing things you’ve never done…

Yet, you try to work this out,

you gave a duck, she made an owl;

sitting with a point to prove,

to harness every hearty hoot.

I don’t know if this is a ‘Little Rhyme’. Perhaps it’s a little more substantial at a personal level than one, having been honest to this sleepy digression of mine. Long time, you know. And I don’t know if it was a ‘wait’ to think if this was worth it. To ‘YOU’, almost obviously.

A THOUSAND MILES

Not exactly a forced thought, for I found myself to be duty-bound. It’s something I’ve wanted to write for long, but postponed because it’s kind of inside my head anyway, but I wanted it out this time because you know, it’s been a while. I can’t be entirely honest about this, I’ve specifications.

A hundred feet on bumpy road,

walking through the doors I know;

a weary pair of shoes I tuned

to turn towards the world that’s you

I’ve been running all my life,

to one without my oldest find;

with scarcities and second thoughts,

in times without your rocket-launch

A thousand miles, my target set,

staring at the road ahead;

if only I could last the night,

I’d stumble through the whole divide

Dazed as the morning finds,

the outcome of a storm in gloom;

with yellow paint on winter white,

and blackness caught on shades of blue

It’s alright, I have half a heart

and half a hand in half this war;

but what with half the world alive,

biding time for half the strike?

And then you slice my night to two,

a complementary split of mood;

my sleet gets gagged by fire-power,

and smoke that fogs a perfect shot

A part of feet and taking wind,

needles of rain sent streaming in;

trembling on the picture-frame,

half-forsaken, half-afraid…

I walked, I ran, I sighed, I flew,

or at least I dreamt of what I’d do;

so rest a little, wait a while

and I’ll see you in a thousand miles

EPILOGUE

Freedom takes a walk out there,

returning without clothes to spare;

chasing fleas in running shoes,

apple-crazy, whole or bruised…

How much can this calf withstand,

inside the chest of half a man?

And a lesser sense that creeps inside

that a thousand miles isn’t worth my time

Taxi drives, her smile, her talk,

her nose, her hair, her crazy walk;

a thousand miles ahead, as said,

and the blanket finally found my head…

To ‘You’. And sorry about the hiatus, it implied nothing but the fact that there was a hiatus, like a hiatus for hiatus’ sake, nothing more to explain.

MISERY

I'm aware it's a little more 'Half Nelson' than I intended it to be, and a lot of previous lines too, yeah. But still, it's kind of a break-through. I'm proud of it like I'm proud of everything I've given birth to, and subsequently disowned.

When have I rejoiced

in the vitality of life

to know for a fact

that I haven’t died?

When would this cold

help rid me some flesh

so I can feel to the bone,

unsheathed from the comb?

When would my night

be spent in the day,

with the time I’m awake

and things done would stay?

The answer to lies

in moments of truth,

with poison in mind

lies sweetness construed?

Walking to wind up

with circles of thought,

and helical advancements

in safety be brought…

And an alternate being

would wake up to her,

and lie without shame

and smile from the dirt.

'Little Rhymes' sees an addition after quite a while, and so does my poetry folder. Felt like Dan Dunne finally wrote his novel, but I know I just scraped half a page. 'To you', as usual.

MY LOVE LETTER

To Lily and to Rosemary, I hereby attach this hoping you'd successfully find the Jack of Hearts.

The reason why I wrote this in the first place.

MAN ON THE SIDE

"The King", she said.

I said "I'm right here. But I can't do the moonwalk."

Is this sadness, though? I mean, every word said appears to be heftily laden with doubt and that's doubt beyond overrule, because while to overrule is completely up to oneself, at a personal level, this doubt had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with her, or it had everything to do with me and she had nothing in it whatsoever, and since there is a nothingness and an accompanying completeness in existence, there can never be a part-clarification. And to clarify in entirety would still remain at the place where it's always been: forever a foot from me.

"Poetic romance", I said. "Heard he's so very giving that he overshoots it."

"To each, his own", she said.

This is not an email conversation. And that means I can see her, face to back, for she's always faced away from me whenever we've spoken and maybe that's because that's the part of her I admire most, not out of my fetish but her exceptionality. Particularly those moments in front of the mirror, doing something I dislike but not of her, for she is someone who could possibly turn me, making me like it, for I would somehow detach the glossiness from it, sizing it up to be purely an act of necessity, not of beautification of outer self, but as a stronghold on inner confidence that only merely shows on the surface. Or maybe I would like it only because she does it, and that would be reason enough for me.

"If that's the case", I lazed, "then you have just cracked the judicial system."

I sniffed, not letting go of the half-smile that so supposedly reinforces me and I reinforced it with this twitchy stiffening of my left jaw that had strangely become habitual. And I had just said something that made me earn a look from her, from under the very same eyebrows that help cool her burning eyes (I know, I know!).

"What of Gandhi?" she questioned. "What about Lewis Carroll?"

"What about you?"

She paused, open-mouthed, fighting with all her feminine brute to snub the smile that tried to show, as the obvious eventually came out.

"Do you do this as a profession?"

"You know I don't", I smiled.

"Well", she turned back to the mirror, still stubborn, "how much do I know then, right?"

"Well", I mimicked her. "You know about the King, you know about Gandhi, you know about Lewis Carroll, and oh, you know I'm a half-geek who thinks he's just a tenth of what you are."

I bit my lip in the same "Let's see you pull this one off" kind of way traditionalized by Ethan Hawke in 'Before Sunrise', and I was struck by this thought that told me I was pushing this whole 'Being a bundle of everyone else but myself' thing. She remained quiet, the room was dark but I could feel the heat of her breath and the rush of her blood and that made me feel so like a mosquito all of a sudden, pointlessly buzzing about her.

"Excuse me Miss Busybody", I almost sang. "Could you pencil me in?"

She laughed and laughed and laughed, and I realized that I could actually regret what I say.

"I know", I sighed, as she proved wrong an assumption of mine, being incessant with her laughter.

"Hey.." she said as she subsided. "Study beckons. I'd see you then?"

"Yeah well", I paused. "Sure."

"Ta Ta."

And she hung up.

I fell on my bed, rolled on it, punched a pillow and thought that if the best I could currently do was to quote an obvious John Mayer, then I clearly needed a life.

But then again, wouldn't she always have said the first goodbye?

THE SECRET GARDEN.

“I can’t be with you.”

“No.”

“I can’t.”

I breathed deep. “I want you to reconsider that.”

“What?”

“I want you to think about what you said, and not say it again.”

I don’t know if she complied, but she didn’t speak beyond, at least for the while that could be called ‘subsequent’. We weren’t eating, it wasn’t a dinner date that went wrong, because I don’t even know if it was going wrong or if it was heading exactly where I wanted it to head. But then again, I couldn’t afford a ‘tongue-in-cheek’; I couldn’t resist one either. I was reminded that it was turning out to be one of those times when my hand ceases to be part of me, a part my mind could will. I went for her forehead, got to her cheek, but a few strands of the hair that fell on her face were all I managed to grasp between my fingers: The spaces that were hers, that are.

“I don’t know how to explain…”

“I never asked you to.”

I couldn’t bring myself to loathe her tears, it’s something I had learnt out of trial and error, and I’ve always erred when it came anywhere close to hating anything that was hers. The tip of my index finger was all that acted and a dew of her teardrop was all it caught, a speck and its rainbow to some lucky fly. She wasn’t guilty, she never looked down, she never used to. Always the cause, never the act: she ghost-wrote me. She still does, and I guess she would as long as I exist, for her lifetime is too much to ask for. Too long a time in the clouds, too much of summer, too much of shine; too much of ‘ever-last’.

“This guy…” she began. I swore I could have cried, but a half a smile is the closest I got to it. “He…”

I looked down at the grass. Not that I wished I were as fleeting, so that I could boast of a whole life with her, but because I couldn’t stop a prospective laugh that threatened to show if I looked at her shuttling eyes. Speaking would be an even worse give-away, while the silence could hurt her. But I was helpless to be otherwise, pretending I was only listening to ‘Idiot Wind’ and not seeing it live.

“All you…” she said, shaking her head. “All you…”

I couldn’t even nod.

“What are you doing?” I wished I could stop her sobs. “What are you even doing?” She shook her head again. “Cynical. So, so cynical.”

“So are you.” I bit my lip.

She shook her head again: I was challenging her. Big deal, she always exhausted me.

“A second’s plunge in fire, dead,

a breath of heaven, letter-sent;

an apple of mine, in moonlit eyes,

the only times that I’m alive…”

She shrugged her shoulders and looked away, as I tried to find the smile I framed. I’ve never wanted to say a lot of things to her, she never fancied dessert, this dinner-woman with a meal of a mind that she hogged all by herself. Still I did say this because it needed to be said and she was too close to miss it, even if whispered.

“Mere minutes, you know…” I said as I hugged her. “And you shouldn’t demand from the dead, that’s like a violation, I could sue you for that.”

She shook her head again before she burned my eyes: I should have settled for the top of her head.

“I’ll see if you can pull these threads apart.”

And I won't tell you how long I kissed her, in this losing game that I played.

HAND-IN-HAND

I burned. I had seven different reasons to not wear a shirt that night, all from distinct parts on my upper body, but I did wear one eventually. Indigo, with dark-blue patterns not keenly observed because I wore it. And I wore it not for the design, or at least not just for the design, although wearing something good only makes me feel more reassured of myself; neither for the occasion, for I hardly connected with the festivity and nor did I attempt to. I wore it for you because you’ve always liked being flattered, as much as I’ve believed the act to be completely non-negative on my part; because I knew that you’d wear better, for although this summer could prove to be seasonally indelible with its effects, I knew nothing can ever touch the way you present yourself. And I wore it to avoid anomaly.

“Everyone is unfortunate.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone doesn’t have you for tonight.”

You laughed the same limited laugh you laugh all the time. Like you’d never let go of the whole of it, never philanthropic, always selfish. I wonder why you differ in your silence and your fury.

“Why are you with me?”

“Because you mind me drinking, and I don’t want to.”

“And I wouldn’t tempt you?”

“I would drink it then.”

The smile. You reminded me that you’ve never really needed your lips to smile. Your eyebrows: Those were all you needed, the shapes they would take only to be adorned, reinforced by the shine from beneath them. I’ve scoffed at the moon because of you. She can never burn by sight.

“But it’s pointless, though. You’d always be the addict.”

“Even in full control?”

“Especially in full control. Because there’s nothing more absurd than that that can be said.”

“Can you say it in a better way?”

“Should I?”

The tray just passed us, and I remembered that you didn’t need etiquette at places like these, that you could always get away with what you wanted, as long as you took it from someone who can never afford it, because he would never be able to afford the consequences of denying either. A glass for you and a glass for me as the ambient went numb, its music morphing to our own, what we rejoice, rather than the drawls of contemporary gangster Hip-Hop. 'Things behind the sun'. Nick Drake.

“Toast to us.”

“Cheers.”

Elbows intertwined, we raised the glasses to our lips and downed it all in one shot. I felt the liquid trickle down my chin and flow, making its way along the patterns on my shirt, drenching it as it passed, not making its way to the welcome ground, eventually halting at my belt-strap. My glass then slipped from my hand, for I was never known for the strength of my grip but rather for the weakness of it. A chest that could never assist to stop the fall and a pair of knees that only worked late made shards out of it. The handle sank cozily to the earth, a flag-post of sorts, and the pieces minced found their places at notches on the bottom of my shoe. And I felt thankful that I wore them.

I didn’t wake up, even then.

You being here, who was I kidding? I was never the one you looked out for, and that’s because you never looked out for anyone anyway. Neither was I a ‘nobody’ enough to fill a void with the void staying a void even after I’m done filling it. You’re a world on your own, and I guess I’m not ‘him’ to fail to see that. Because that was what I found in you, in the first place. But it still burned, you know, there’s no return to bliss, there’s no return to the ignorance that constituted it: An indelible marker-stain on whiteboard mind. And it still burned, because that was my first time.

I tried to not look into your tear-stained eyes, those rainclouds, as you tried to not look anywhere else but into mine. I took your hand, I filled the rightful slots where my fingers should have been and we made some warmth, and that made me snort my smile. Someone had told me the Sun would die sometime, that we would cease to exist some day, that doom needn’t be ‘spelt’ because it ‘is’ and that it only needed time to mature: Time that’s probably ‘beyond’ you and me. Ironical.

I could burn some suns, with you. And you would save the world, just as you’ve been doing all the while. Who needs ‘us’, when there’s you and me and the harmony that’s required?

RUMPUS DIARY

It is a desert. A beauty contest between the sand and the sun, and while Carol would have been a dismal jury given his centimetre thick fur-coat, Max found himself on a hopeless attempt to soothe the heat by sweating on it. He looked at the source of it all, the cause of the ‘crunch’, something he came to know of only very recently, and in a chill of fear that did nothing to comfort, he turned to his twelve-foot friend whom he supposedly should have been mentoring.

“Carol.”

“Mhm?”

“Did you know the sun was going to die?”

“What?” A mournful pause. “I never heard that.”

What’s sadness to a shattered state? Carol’s pause wasn’t a dwell on the statement, while Max simply couldn’t steer clear of it. But it was a twinge of pleasure in itself, watching someone as strong as Carol sink to where he stood, where he’s been standing for a while now.

“Oh come on…”, Carol said, as Max lifted his chin a little. “It’s not going to happen.” He paused again. “I mean, you’re the king, and look at me… I’m big!” He paused again. “How could guys like us worry about a tiny little thing like the sun, huh?”

And for someone who always had a runny nose and a lake in his eyes, Carol smiled and convincingly enough. Max smiled too, for he felt his anchor drop down, finding the smallest solid rock of hope than just simply hanging around. And sometimes we find that that’s the most that’s required.