A MAN AND A WOMAN

This is not a love story.
Only true.

A Man. There was a man who walked the thin line of "had been" and "will be".
He didn't belong to any of the elements. He mocked Water and Air. Earth and Sky. He played with the Ball of Fire as it transcended different worlds and different time zones. Come Dusk, come Night, I could always find him there. The undeniable Master of Puzzles. The irresistible Quizzer of Riddles and Rhymes.

As he spoke, the meaning of his words became more emphasized with the chords and the scales of the piano lending his words the audacity of a soothsayer. Haunting.
A Woman. The woman shuttled in between different worlds, trying to make two ends meet and never meeting the end, never once belonging to any world.

She was too intrepid for her sex. And too atheist for her religion. She was an element that was not yet discovered. She teased the storms, she made the tension grow deeper with her every leap and slide on the waves and winds.

She was warned many times by the rage of gods and devils alike, that her acts of temerity and insolent heedlessness will be punished. She laughed. "Take this heart, and break it," they had said to the world. But the world looked on helplessly at the heavens and hells. Enigma.

A Man and a Woman. She had fallen here and risen to unmatched impertinence.
The world was His playground.

The spirits has risen when he'd summoned them, mesmerized by the extent of his pertness.

Many dismissed him as imaginary, unreal. They had argued with me: after all, I couldn't see him. But then, I wondered, even a horizon by definition, is an imaginary line. Unreal. Yet, one could see it. Unreal, but your sight could zero in on that line running far far away, with a beginning and continuity, with no grasping end. Infinity. If a so called "unreal" thing could be seen by a mortal eye, imagine what else can be seen if one opened the doors where the power of imaginations lay unsummoned in our cores.

So the horizon, though termed as imaginary, did exist. The only frustrating factor was that it could never be reached! It was there, mocking all of us.
And then who set the parameters of imagination? The extent to which we could let loose, and hold something back? Parameters of dreams and practicality and time? Two hands that dictated all our lives. Mortality.

No, spare the woman these boundaries. She won’t stay here. She set her own imaginations, waltzing in between her Dreams, with the chords of a soft and a violent guitar electrifying her presence. You could see her, but you could never touch her. Her presence and existence similied with that of the horizon.
Visible, but untouched, and unattainable.

And when the world argued with me about his existence and non existence, I told them, "No thanks," and walked away. It was in the maze of all these countless silent defenses that he mocked me, "So, you'll defend me, now?"
I granted him that pleasure.

The woman kept walking on the line, he made it.
He was the ground beneath her feet- she stood tall, unquestionable, and he was the pride.

She smiled and he was the dimple in her cheek, and the twinkle in her eye.
He was nowhere, he was everywhere. In the shadows. In the dark forbidden room of desires. Never together, never apart. Their realization of being inseparable leaving them as they shuttled in the mortal world, only to come back again to both of them: stronger and more violent in their transparency.

They were new instances of inhibition. Naked. Transparent.

He had known what it was to color a rainbow, and she had counted all the colors that could possibly exist here.
They both had refused the crumbs off the world's table. Hunger was such a big issue with them.
The sky struggled to cover both of them. The man moved with the Earth. Fast. Slow. Fast. Slow.
And the woman flirted with the orbit of the planet. Rising. Descending. Up. Down.
Anti- stationary.
From the stillness of a heartbeat comes alive a deep violence. It was this violence that had confirmed both of them the remotest possibility of their sync of heartbeats. Soundless, but alive with a shocking violence. Dangerous. Natural.
There was a thread that connected the Man and the Woman. A certain degree of stillness, and music. The beats of chords, strums and scales mixing together. Subtle, at the beginning, and rising as a tension filled climax.

He defied Death. She defined Life.

He breathed. Her bosom made a movement.

They were the original of the species. And they carried the weight of the concept very well:
It is they who decide/
Whether they live or if they Die/
From each other they mysteriously hide....
The mysterious distance between a Man and a Woman.
And I wake up from a sleepless bed to write their story.

The Tear That Refused To Fall

It was not a problem. So there was not a solution for it to be found.

Just a few questions to be answered. I questioned. But he refused to answer.

May be there was something wrong with me, after all. For, I questioned everything.
"Where is god?"
"Why do we have to 'fall' in love?"
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"

I asked a lot of questions. And people answered me. Such that I always kept asking more questions. I was never satisfied. Then I gave up people. I found out answers for myself. And I was now satisfied.

Then something felt wet. It was my eyes. A tear. My common sense said that yes, it would come down. It had to. So I waited for it to flow. Waiting for it to flow seemed like an eternity. As if the tear was suspended in a vertical horizon, trapped in the time zones of different worlds. Or may be it happens to people who never cry.
That one tear seemed strange. It didn't come out of the eyes easily.

I waited and waited.

Seemed like it had fallen in love with my eyes. It refused to leave. Or may be it sensed that I was lonely, and I would appreciate some company apart from my own shadow's, and some voices hitting my ear drums. But no. It was not in love with my eye, nor did it care for my loneliness, for, at that very moment it left my eye. The diamond no longer shone in my eye. I had lost something.

There were so many worlds in that single droplet of tear.
Amazing.
One tiny drop of water.
Infinite pains, infinite voices.
Things, people, events could be so simple. And so complicated too. Depends on how much your imagination was willing to forgive you.
My worlds.
Seen, unseen. Some conquered, some still virgin.

His presence.
His existence.
An ocean of waiting. And I was swimming there.

Would I drown? Would some one come to my rescue? Or would I give up and shout for help? Would I conquer the horizon?

Oh, the wetness I could feel in that one drop of tear! The conflict of real, and the unreal. Dreams. Ground reality. Night. Day. Sunrises. Dusks. Twilights. Yes, I love the twilights. Best of both the worlds- moon and the sun.
Faith. Betrayal.
Darkest Sky. Endless Night.
Shining ray.
Rapture.
Helplessness.

It seemed like eternity. And I waited.
I would wait.

I dont think I am in love. I was always in love with my life. Passion flowed in my veins instead of blood. Coffee, too. This was above love.

I asked people if it was possible to live life with that one spark that someone has gifted to you? Or should you go ahead and catch that spark and make it yours- forever- body and soul?
"If there are more sparks, I would marry that person."
"Not necessarily. You would want him to be around. Always."

They shrugged.

I should not have asked this question. But then I always asked questions.
Bad habit.
May be a virus had entered my system. But I dont want it leave.

But what exactly was the problem? There was none. And nor am I looking for a solution. Am just flowing with the rhythm. Music never sounded so sweet before.

I would live the spark.

Love is not a one way street. It runs both the ways.

I will dream and smile, as Eurythmics sang:
"Who couldn't be together and who could not be apart(...)"

[January 2006]

The Zahir

Prologue
If I believed you were a Star, I think you'd burn and fall
If I believed you were a Song, I think you'd echo in the depth of the Seas
~
The Zahir
Melt down the sky for me
Freeze the mildest Zephyr
Burn for Me
Dont leave me short of Happy Endings

A Frozen Dream that drips
Like a thirsty Rain
My Earth, it makes flowers
My sky, it bends Gravity

Drops that flowed
From the Brown to the Blue
From the Ground to the Skies
From Mine to your Eyes

The Prism's Voice,
We both hear, but never listen,
The Prism's hands, we both watch, but never see
The salt of your skin is the only taste I respond to

I claim my Millions
While you give me the Stardust that your trial leaves behind
I'll stand up to that dust,
Decorate that shine on my soul

The deliciousness of forbiddance
The Kissed Lips, and the Broken Heart
A crack in the stone
A streak of lightening in a glass

The miracle of a drug, give me Life
Or Death
Or show me it doesnt matter anymore
Make me a constant traveler who comes naked, everytime
~
Epilogue
I believe you are the hunter,
I know the touch of your arrow is everything I could ask for, the only thing I have waited for.

[This piece is not a dedication. It IS created for The Zahir, and for Self Exile.]

Lust

The Thief, the Reward

The Calm, of a Hungry, Hungry Beast

The River, that holds The Frozen Moment

The Bridge, and its Eventual Collapse

The Prison, warranting the sacred Free Fall

The Cage, with Burning Wings

The Light, deliciously Dark

The Hope, of the Life of an Everlasting Curse

You are The Soul
Of My Infinite Lust

Blue-berries

In the Sweetness of Memory
In the Re-defined Infinity
In the Bewitching Dollops of Madness
In the Silvers at Three Oh Seven AM
In the Blacks and Black-outs
In the Colors of the Rain, that bowed
Seeds promised me Trysts of Seasons


And I
Swam the Oceans of Night
The goal of an equally darker Horizon Stares
Waiting to Tease the Twists and Sleight of Hand
Of a Humorous god
The Madness becomes the Ink of the Soul
To bring you the Dusks and Dawns of an Infinite Universe

Dawning the Dusk

Pieces of glass waxed over a Gray Wall
Or the Galaxies facing a twinkling shortfall
I am charged but for One Possession

They can smile and sing a beautiful Lie,
Sprinkle some stardust in your eye
I am called to undo those Silverspot Strawberries

The Voodoo is charmed by your side
Lucky is the Sun with whom you rise
But I stay awake like a Pawn's Collateral