My home town

Any motorcycle ride back in the streets of my hometown hurls me down the memory lane at such a speed that I hardly get time to breathe. How unfair! Why would it be successful even after all these years to make me relive my life 2 decades back? The cycle rides in groups, sudden rains that left us completely drenched, the long conversations about nothing in the street corners and all those forbidden things of those times that make me laugh now, the long rehearsals of a play that was never staged and the love that was not to be mine!

No, I would not say it was a time of no care. It was not. We had too many worries. Sudden tests at the tuition classes and more than that of the low scores that used to be announced in front of the boys one was trying to impress! The intense desire to chat longer with friends and show how one is not scared of the parents at all! And then worrying endlessly about reaching home later than usual and the scolding that awaited one there! Or the questions that I, wanted to ask my father and was not allowed to do so. And the answers that I had for my mother but had no way of mouthing them without causing the third world war in the household. All the restrictions and scolding did not make sense at all! They don’t even now! Therefore, most of my memories ask me not to go back. I love the freedom I have today. And above all I am happy I cleared my 12^th standard exam at one go. I don’t want to try my luck again!!

Then why the streets of my home town makes me want to go back to the friends who are not friends any more, to the houses which are now inhabited by unknown people, to the love that means nothing for me no more. Why the street next to the City library would without fail remind me the lines read and not read on the way to the library and back but not in the library? Why would it make me remember the filmy numbers that I hummed to the star filled sky while riding a motorbike with Baba? While passing through the street next my school, why should I always remember a particular evening when the street lights played along? This time I even remembered a long cycle ride with a few friends to my friend’s street just to get a glimpse. How silly! Yet how memorable! And then that morning when I noticed him on a scooter and he did not and hence came back looking for me. He bumped on to a divider and fell down from his scooter while looking for me. We both laughed a lot! All these and much more which have no relevance now. They are just memories of a distant life. So distant that it seems like another life!

My home town makes me way younger! And it makes me think everything can be started afresh! I feel confident to make mistakes again. Why do I want to relive all those sweet nothings? And arguing as if the issue really mattered! Is it because now-a-days when I forego fighting back even at the cost of feeling terrible about myself and tossing and turning in bed at night, I miss the spirit of that girl who lived in my hometown?

P.S. This was written in May, 2012. 

The inertia of wait

It feels I never learned to love.
I only thought love is a deep friendship
And caring for the other 
And that deep desire to prolong the meeting, 
as much as possible....
It seems I could not have been further,
from the definition of true love.

I waited for love, still.
Or that's what I thought!
I then started working towards getting some.
From the man, who was ordained by his social position to love me! (Poor him! in retrospect)
'Though they said, "Do not seek love at any cost
For love does not have a price!"
I still went ahead.
In your youth you are not supposed to learn from popular wisdom!
I kept trying and then forgot to stop!
In hindsight, it seems, it was inertia of motion.

Inertia of motion. That is exactly what it is even now.
I can not stop talking to you once I start.
I therefore try not to speak at all.
But you do not allow that, do you?
You want to talk but you do not want to continue.
You want to reach out but you can not be a friend.
You want me to stay but you can not love.
You lost that in you..
You have to have follies to be a friend.
You have to have the courage to be vulnerable, to love. 
Your sentences have to be imperfect,
Laced with emotions that you felt.
You could not be infallible then.
I miss that imperfect friend in you.

I missed the friend in him too.
The friend that he once was.
The desire of friendship that replaced the desire of love,
As the lack of love became a reality that I lived  with.
But the bar was set too low
And the disappearance was slow.
It took me years to understand I lost that too.
The temperature of the water was raised ever so slowly
And like the proverbial frog, I missed the danger signals.
I was boiled in the same water that I thought was my world.

Frogs we all are. 
We wait through the long winter nights,
Feigning ignorance about what is happening around.
Completely ignoring the signals, 
That we get through our skins
We count on the rains to come!
We forget there is El Nino and La Nina,
We forget there are thousand other possibilities.
We just wait....

As if wait will bring the desired..
As if it required just a bit more waiting..
As if waiting has been enough!! Ever!

I need a river

I need a river now.
I need to sit by it and see it flowing silently.
It may not flow so silently, because
I need to look at those whirlpools
And to feel the calm surface,
The strong currents deep within
I need to meet a river, again.

I have almost never lived without a river. 
From Damodar, across Ajay to the great Ganges
Rivers followed me all through my childhood.

But when you told me,
My eyes tell you tales of a river
Many many years later,
I started wearing my specs all over again. 
Tightly this time. 
No one should see the rivers that I carry within. 

You insisted,
"There is a river in each person
Damodar in you and Zungki in me.
The Sun rises and sets in it. Everyday.

Much like in each one of us. 
At times the river looks completely barren, but then it fills up again.
At times it is as little as a tear drop
And then becomes the universe in itself.
I, the fisherman, find that river in you.
It is your river that I live by."
I looked away and pushed my specs tightly up my nose.
"I can not let the river flow", I mumbled.  

But I need that river now.
My river has dried and the sandy banks show..
But I need to find the flow somehow, deep within.
I need the river that flows silently
And you can cry by it.
I need to find a river that can laugh on my behalf 
(Till I find it in me).
I need to see a flowing river that tells me
"Come what may...life goes on!"
I need it to reiterate, 
"We are all universe upon ourselves
We carry everything we need in us.
We are complete throughout our journey to the sea.
We all roam boundless yet bound
meaningless, aimless, like a wanderer
But meaningfully and with a greater purpose!"

And several times in circles too!
Sad but true....

But for now....I need a river to sit by...
Till it starts flowing in me again...