House like a Coffee Shop

It all started a long time back. When exactly, I don’t know but it was always there, that thought at the back of your head which slowly steadily becomes an attribute. It just happened one day, the realization, of course, sitting in a coffee shop and telling the person, whom I accidentally happen to love, about how I would love to live in a house such as that shop. A glass front, a walk in kitchen, a small living room with a spiral staircase leading to a bedroom and well, I did muttered something about a Ducati parked in the driveway but that was it. All I wanted was a place for myself, a place where would exist as I have always wanted to, a place which I would fill with my books, my music, my iDevices and my idiosyncrasies. I place where the only sound would either be that of mine or guitar strumming punctuated by drum beats.

I often wondered when people said they needed to be alone, to think or to do whatever they do. I wondered because solitude always quietened my thinking. Only thing I need to think when I am alone is what to cook for myself or what to read next and yes I do think about what I read but that’s just a part of the process. I read, I think and if I like it, I let the idea lie at the back of my head. It’s not that I don’t like people or that I am anti social, well I am to a certain extent which involves eschewing all forms of meaningless conversations and goodbyes and I often don’t say hello to people because I don’t like exchanging pleasantries post that, but it’s just that I don’t feel the need to go out, extend a hand and relate.

That brings me back to the thought that became me, the thought that I could possibly live alone for the rest of my life. The thought that I am complete in myself, that what I need is within me. Companionship, appreciation, belonging, the feeling of being home, the things which people so desperately crave but even after trying hard, walking round the fire or down the aisle or accepting someone through a muslin cloth, still couldn’t find. To be content you have to be complete and you have to be complete in yourself, thinking someone else would come along and fill the holes in you would just leave you with a perforated yarn, scaffolding so fragile that an iota of doubt could make it shiver.

I want to be alone and free until I outgrow the void inside me, until I have been and done what I wanted to do, until I have fulfilled every last desire inside me, until the fork between solitude and companionship becomes one, until I have something to share with someone, something which begs to be shared not for the sake of an entitlement but just for the sake of sharing. Until then all I want to do is live in is a house just like a coffee shop.

things which relationship can never teach…

There are many things that a relationship can teach you, too many things to be precise. Each day, each moment simply opens up your eyes to something new, a new realization, a new feeling, a newer perspective, a newer life. But then a relationship isn’t a school for life isn’t a school for we all have made same mistakes over and over again for we all have fallen in love and fallen for the same words. Had life been a school we would never have been in love for to love means to unlearn, to love means to let go and to live means to live and not to sit back and analyze and look behind every move and to speak with an intend. Life isn’t something which an academician can teach you for life lies beyond what we can see, life is everywhere, in an empty room, in an empty space for everything in life has a place, everything has it’s time for sometimes even the best of us, the most garrulous of us, the most outgoing of us, seek that reticence, seek that solitude, seek those darkened rooms and closed doors.

I don’t know a thing about anything, let alone life but the only thing that I know is to love and to love with every corner and space from within. To love and to become love, to demand and to become the demand, to fly and to become the wings, to paint the town red and to become the color, to be and to become what I am. Love is what I sought in solitude for love is where you rediscover yourself; love is my solitude where I become what I am and if love takes away your identity then let it for it’s our identities which are standing between us and love. Let me be nothing, let me be a whim, let me be the air, let me be the cloud, let me be the raindrop, one like every other, every other like one, quenching the expecting earth and becoming the earth itself. And that is why we never have loved and that is why our hearts are so full yet so empty because we are not what love wanted us to be, we are a name followed by everything that we are not, we are not love.

There are many things that a relationship can teach you but mine didn’t taught me anything for I am just a stupidly in love person for practicality is something which I always have left behind; practicality and fear for if love can’t set you free than it isn’t love. And I am vulnerable, and I am weak for there isn’t a space, the emptiness left inside of me that love didn’t uncover. And I stand uncovered, unsheathed like a neonatal now, reborn, reclaimed, rejuvenated, and waiting like this expecting earth to unite with my beloved and to become the beloved itself.

And if there is something which I did learn is about love and the way it lies in every nook and corner for love isn’t about spending your lives together rather love is about infusing your togetherness with life. And life doesn’t lie in preciseness, life isn’t about brevity for life is in details, life is in speck which we often end up missing, tossing or replacing, waiting for that big moment we end up missing everything that lies in between, forgetting that it’s these in betweens where our life exists.

The Cruse of The Crisis

If I was to ever come with a list of things which I said but shouldn’t have said, well lists are girly so I am not actually ever going to come up with one and seriously I never could understand people obsession with them. My dad is like the forbearer of all list-makers like with him everything has to be listed and well planned out. Shopping list, to do list, not to do list, people to meet list, people not to meet list, places to be list, trains to catch list, routes to take during peak hours list, routes to avoid during peak hours list and over and above the packing list. Well keeping aside the intentional exaggeration, why something’s need to be so damn organized, why for once we simply can’t forget say a toothbrush or a pair of socks or a pair boxers while going on a journey, why can’t we for once forget to pick up ketch up from our latest excursion to the departmental store and why for once can’t we forget the keys and leave certain doors locked? Why we have to be perfect, why do we have to jot down everything and stick all those teeny tiny post-its everywhere and for crying out loud God, the almighty, gave us brain, with storage capacity that could even put a thousand Time Capsules to shame, so why can’t we for once remember things without actually making a note of them? Well my girlfriend who actually thinks of me to be a person, now that’s a debatable issue for I have been directly or indirectly been called a Dog like a zillion times but anyways she thinks of me to be a person, wow I just can’t over the sound of it, she actually thinks of me to be person and not a jerk though I kind of know that it must have taken nothing short of an herculean effort from her. But again all these overly exaggerated digressions apart she did think of me to be a person whose memory could even challenge that of rocks though these weren’t her exact words for not everyone is not blessed with the eloquence and verbosity to put what all that is in their hearts or mind or wherever into words but still this is what she must have meant when she asked me a cure for of her forgetfulness.

If only I could have told her how cursed the people like me are for we are the ones who can’t forget, who can’t move on, who can’t let go and we are the people whom the time chose as custodians, remembering and never forgetting even the slightest of transgressions or slips of tongue or insolence. And yes right now I really want to forget, close my eyes and go to sleep for I can’t fight her memories which seem to running, rummaging and melting in every corner of my mind. I want to forget the sad truth that she isn’t with me right now and I want to forget myself for that’s the only way I could ever bring myself to not miss her and really I want to forget the rain that’s beating against my window sill. And I am sitting here in this room, watching Optimus Prime battling it out against the Decepticons and really right now I feel like Optimus Prime or at least I feel like the way he would have felt when Megatron went onto pierce his heart and in this battle of mine, the Megatron is called the Crisis.

It took Sam Witwicky, a journey back and forth to the Transformers heaven before he could bring Optimus back to life but as far as my life goes it would take exactly 11 days for the curse of the Crisis to lift and till then I just wish to be a teeny tiny transformer who sitting on her table top or may be lying in her purse would at least get to feel the touch of her hand and smell her intoxicating fragrance and listen to her mellifluous voice as she chatter her way around the whole day.

Things She Taught Me….

Relationships are all about learning, each day that we spend day together unravels a series of realizations, things which we realize about ourselves and emotions- justifiable and unjustifiable, reasonable and unreasonable- which we never thought we were capable of and it’s not just about her or me, it’s about us. What we say, what we feel, what we realize when we look deep inside ourselves that makes us know about each other, about the indelible bond that we share, about us. What I was, what I will be, I don’t know but what I become when I am with her, is all that matters to me and sometimes I can’t help but be proud of the perfect love which she gave to me. And I know in this world where nothing is what it seems like, it is this belief and pride of mine that will make this union a beautiful one because nothing could ever be beautiful if you don’t think of it to be.

Every day, each moment, I learn, I feel something new. I used to believe once in the unconditional love and all the stupid notions which a lot of stupid people have preached but now I just know human love could never be unconditional. But yes I do have a hope that maybe someday when both of us would have fulfilled most of each other’s desires then maybe we will end up loving each other just for the sake of loving for this love is what that has redeemed both of us. And I learned that love isn’t in the roses or blooms that you may buy for each other, love lies in those moments when you went out of the way and begged to the florist to give you an extra rose bud, love lies in the moments when she has to come up with an incomprehensible story just so she could keep the flowers in her living room, love lies in that one smile that she gave me and love lies in that underlying happiness that I knew she felt but never showed. Love lies in those distance that we walked, love lies in those moments when we held each other’s hand, love lies in the steps she took despite of herself just to please me, love lies in tears which my words often bring to her eyes, love lies in the longing which often fills our heart and love lies everywhere in each gap and in each of our breath.

I learnt to understand though she would beg to differ but then when you have lived your entire life for yourself; it often gets difficult to see a point other than the one that you are making. And yes now I can say I have grown for now I know how to live my life for someone else and even though money can never buy love but every now and then it could be spend to make the people you love happy.  It’s not the gifts that you buy for flowers and chocolates and stuff can never last forever for when your flowers have all crumbled down and roses have become a part of some book even then your love will bloom. But yes, once in a while, it doesn’t hurt to do things that would end up taking her breath away like a kiss on a rainy day, underneath the blue sky, on a wide open road for kisses such as these would always linger even when your lips have parted and you are no longer with each other. And it’s not for her to let her guard down and feel carefree but it’s you who have to provide her with this feeling, it’s you who have to take her mind, heart and soul away, it’s you who have to possess for hearts beat a lot better when they are possessed.

And I learnt nothing could ever beat the feel of cool breeze on your skin on a rainy day and nothing could beat eating corn while sitting breathtakingly close on a moving bike and nothing could beat the feel of holding that corn so that she have her bite and nothing could beat the feel which you get when she all of a sudden ends up telling you about some long forgotten liaison and all you want to do is to stab yourself to death with the very same corn and then you close your eyes and all you can see is her face and all you can smell is her sweet fragrance and then past simply seems irrelevant for you know it’s not the past but rather the moment which matters and besides no one can stab themselves to death with a corn.

And that is not all I have learnt but yeah now I do know, the best moments are not the one which you plan for, best moments are the ones which happen by themselves, best moments are the ones where you just go with the flow, best moments are the one where you stop in the middle of the street and pluck flowers, best moments are the ones when you slip an innocent and childish flower ring into her finger.

Questions- That never were asked

How to act when you are meeting your would be brother in law for the first time or how not to stupidly grin and for a change have an intelligent conversation with him?? Speaking of intelligent conversation, the last time I had one was with my girlfriend though at that time she wasn’t my girl friend and I ended up staring blatantly at her face. More so because she chose to dress up like a Barbie that day and with cheeks so pink and hair so ravishingly long, even demigods would have stopped in their tracks to adore her. Speaking of dressing up, I now kind of know for sure that this is something that runs in her family because the moment I stood next to her brother, I felt grossly underdressed in my tattered jeans and sweaty t-shirt. But then it doesn’t usually take much to make me feel underdressed and her brother was dressed resplendently in shirt and trousers with belt and shoes with socks. Dressing and under dressing apart, the one thing that I realized though much later in the rendezvous and that was to never have a conversation about technology and mobile computing, especially when all you have done is chase around girls and sleep through three years of your post graduation.

Well, we met all three of us and what happened isn’t much of a consequence now more so because nothing much actually happened. I went there expecting a volley of questions and I was all revved up with explanations and all I wanted to do was to convince him of the love that I have for her sister but instead all I got was a pair of really calculating eyes. I can’t blame him though and maybe the word of her sister was enough to convince him of the love that both of us share and maybe he was there to just see for himself how good her sister choice is. At some point in our conversation he did ask me something that actually took me by surprise and that was as to what I think about him. Now there are people you don’t need to have an opinion about, there are people whom you can do without being friends with and expecting love from people whom I happen to be in love with and giving and expecting indifference from everyone else, is the way I live my life. But then love is all about going where you never have been, meeting all those you have never met before and loving all that you never have loved. So yes someday I will have an opinion about him but till then I am happy to look through her eyes and believe whatever she tells me.

And it all ended pretty soon and I walked back home with a lot of unsaid and unexpressed feelings and it was then I realized that I was the one supposed to be running the show but then I have never loved anyone this much before to actually bother meeting their family and try to make an impression. And now I think as long as she is convinced of the love that I feel for her, I don’t need to make an effort and convince anyone else because people who love you can actually sense the conviction in your voice and that’s all I think her brother was looking for.

And now I live my life in a flux, expecting the unexpected, going where the love takes me, saying whatever my heart conjures up and dreaming each moment of time when both of us would be together forever. Love, hope and the sweet smell of her skin, that’s what I live for now.

Love and Hope, Thats all I Live for Now

What does it take for a life to do a one eighty and turn itself around? Well, I don’t know about the world and seriously it is far too hot for me to go out and enquire about someone else’s life but as far as my life goes all it took was three or may be four simple words and nothing was same ever again. It’s been a month and I have woken up every single day, filled with new realizations, filled with newer feelings and in the nights when I would lie in my bed listening to her voice I just couldn’t help but be lost trying to rediscover this newer person whom I have become. Being with her now makes me feel as if I have never been in love before, I don’t remember ever feeling anything this poignant, this ecstatic and sometimes I can’t help but be amazed as to how my heart, which at several instance of a time has been deemed dysfunctional, could even conjure all this that I feel now.

Someone told me once, a whiff of love is all it takes to send your head reeling and nothing could be more heady than this sweet intoxication. Yes, I am intoxicated, lost, dazed and if my friends are to be believed than beyond salvage and yes, now I walk these streets looking for her in every other face that I see and now I want each of my step to be the one that would bring her closer to me. I always believed in God but now when I stand at the altar, my mind goes blank because what else would a person who had got everything in his life could ever want.

We meet, we talk, we text but still I just can’t get enough of her, all I want to do is with her every single moment and after each good bye as I sat alone in a rickshaw and watched as her silhouette faded away in the distance, my heart was just filled with a silent melancholy. And yes, I miss her even more after each time we meet because nothing could ever match up to the way this life and this world feels when she is with me. And yes, when she is sitting next to me this world simply disappears for I step into a new one, the world that is made up of aspirations and expectations, contained within her tiny kohl lined eyes. In that very instant when our eyes meet, I just know that I won’t mind living my life fulfilling every whim, every expectation of hers because in that very instant all her dreams simply become mine.

And yes, I felt safe when she tentatively placed her warm and gentle hand into mine, I felt safe because in that very moment I knew that these would be the hands that would always reach out and hold me strong. When we sat there holding each other’s hand, there was a lot that I felt, there was a lot that was unbecoming inside of me, there was lot that stirred and was washing me over. And yes when we are sit together I go speechless and I get confused because there are just so many things in my heart that I would like to say to her and I don’t how. But I know someday I will find some way to show her all that is inside of me because until the day when both of us would be bound together forever, these words are all I will have to take her heart away. And yes I live on hope that things would always be just as beautiful as they are now and really I can’t help but be filled with this hope when I look back of the last one month because life gave me everything in an instant and now hope and her love is all what I live on. And yes, when I am sitting alone in that rickshaw, it’s this hope that makes me look for her at every bend and every corner for one day when the world within my eyes would have become hers, I know I will find her waiting there for me to come and take her home.

Story That Never Begin..

A broken chair, a friend and an unlighted cigarette

Somewhere away I stared far in the distance

Through the rain and billowing winds

I saw a lot in life as it was blown away with the smoke.

 

Tonight clouds have encompassed again this desert town

And the dunes wait for the heavens to finally pour

But I can’t wait for these sand storms to stop now

For tonight is the night when I have finally found my home

 

A lonely lantern, a solemn heart and a dream of a lifetime

Somewhere hidden in these skies is a place

Where they say all your dreams come true

And I found that place finally when I fell in love with you

And Finally I am in Love…

There is a thing about love, its life altering, intoxicating and all encompassing and all it takes is a whiff and the world around you does a somersault. All your dreams, aspirations and expectations in life and all that you have lived for so far, simply become meaningless and all that matters is love and its sweet blissful scent that seem to infatuate each and every sense of yours. A week or so and my head is still reeling with exhilaration, being with her is so unbelievable like a dream which stretches and becomes your reality. And yes, I have been counting days, minutes and seconds and I am going to do so for another 12 or so odd days until she and me can be together and what a union that is going to be, sitting with her, hand in hand, driven to the brink of speechlessness by a reticent onslaught of these crumbling emotions. And yes each time these clouds roll on, my heart cries because only these tears could possibly enunciate this melancholy of separation but I am just too happy and kind of light headed too, as if her love has been the intoxication and a final deliverance I have been waiting for.

And I am a poet or this is what her love has made me and through this incipient and nonsensical poetry, I tell her all that I feel inside and sometimes I fumble for words because I have never been this madly in love with anyone before and now it feels like as if I have never been in love before until the moment I fell in love with her. And my past and my future do not matter to me now for my past is over and with her lies my future. And yes I have never been this sure about anything in life because never before I found the contentment I have been looking for.

And now when I think of it, I realize my mom was right when she said about me being nothing short of a soothsayer in my previous incarnations and speaking of which my dad couldn’t have been all that far detached from truth either when he said about me being clubbed to death by the very followers whom I soothed with my philosophy. Yes, I have a lot of notions in my head about how a relationship should be, about how two people in it should interact, act and so on and yes I have been too disillusioned by this love before to believe in the permanence of all that I am feeling. But now I think it is this mortality, this evanescence that has made everything beautiful, tomorrow when the love that both of us feel would start to appear more believable then maybe these unsettling emotions may settle down and I will be able to talk about things other than us but even then I would be just as much in love with her as I am now. And I am not going to stop philosophizing but this time around I will rather find some newly in love couples and corrupt their minds with my notions, anathemas and thoughts because at least this relationships of mine could do without my soothsaying’s and philosophies about what work and what doesn’t.

And yes I still look at other girls but with a feigned indifference like a child with a big teddy bear when he find himself in front of a shelf full of Barbie’s would, he may stop and appreciate their long blond hair and unbelievably thin frame but in the end he would move on because he had all that he wants and he happens to be very much in love with what he have in his arms. And whenever I see a couple walking hand in hand I just feel like shouting at the top of my voice and telling them that I too have a girlfriend who happens to love me more than anything else in this world.

And yes I want to be with her for the rest of my life, count the wrinkles as both of us get old, go to sleep each night with the gentle touch of her embrace and look at her face as I wake up each day. Yes I am love and for the first time… truly, deeply and madly.

The Year of Valentine

Valentine’s Day is coming, yet again and just like every other year I find myself in a similar situation, hopeless and single. Well, I would have won each time but if only they have a prize for people who almost always end up getting themselves dumped and that too right before valentine’s or any other day, especially the days when you really need someone to hold you close and kiss your loneliness away. Not that valentine’s day or any other day holds any importance for when you are single each of the days appear to be similarly excruciating but sometimes when you see each of those committed fellows losing their sleep and temper, the prospect of going to sleep alone doesn’t appear all that revolting then. Love isn’t what it used to be or rather it isn’t what all those mushy greeting cards promise to be for one it isn’t something eternal because had it been so we would be celebrating valentine’s day all the year around and secondly, do we actually know what love is and is a teddy bear with a small heart in his lap a perfect mascot? I never could actually understand why teddy bears are white, when in reality they are black and fearsome and why they are called teddy bear and why not polar bear which at least are white though calling them that will also not make them any less ferocious. That apart, I don’t think a person would become more acquiescent or more agreeable and a refusal hurts just as much as it will on any other given day so is this day just for people who already are in love or does it have anything for the vast single populace as well. If it does have something in hiding for the unfortunate few then I am damn sure my college people and our so called elite leaders would have already killed it and seeing the way they respond to anything cross-sexual, I am often intrigued about their propensities, what is that do they expect us to be, homosexuals?? And if we turn out to be that even then would they let us in peace?? People or rather society has always been against love, perhaps because they were afraid of something as potent and poignant as love, they were afraid if left to itself love will conquer all and would asunder each thread which goes into fabricating this social architecture. That is why, perhaps they came up with this safety valve of a tradition, let people have one day when they can celebrate and do all that they want to do in the name of love. I am not against valentine’s day but I am against commercializing and using 14th of February as a day for love for if we really care for love then why not celebrate a valentine’s month or a valentine’s year for that matter and why this day has to be about paramour’s only, is the love we have for our parents or friends not love enough? Well, if you would have already gathered I won’t be going out this valentine’s day more so because in this time of recession micro waved popcorns and downloaded free movies appear to be all the more enticing and probably when all the excitement had died down, I will sit and call each of my friend and family and tell them about the love I have for them for recession or no recession these are the people who will always be with me. Finally if you really intend on making your move this Valentine’s Day then do it on the day after for once all the anticipation has died down and when all the single people have reconciled once again with the loneliness in their lives then probably you have a chance to become a knight in shining armor or a princess who kissed the toad. Will this work, I am not sure for reconciliation may bring about an acceptance for one’s fate and really we may be single but not necessarily desperate but if it works then you could at least 2 have days when you can celebrate love and that too in conjunction.

Lost Without You

It was like any other day

When I happen to throw it all away

Now I search for it along every road

But without love this life seems so cold

What I gave up, I can never know

For death seems like life without a soul

But if I could go back and make things right

And put into words all that’s hidden inside

Perhaps then both of us can move on with our respective lives

For we could no longer walk together along these roads

 And without each other it’s our destiny, to be lost