BLIND

And so it returned.

Like a chuckle on an infant's face.
Like the Sunrays on a dead sky.
Like the flicker in the realm of dark desires.
Like the blink in her stony eyes.

Now that it had come back, its return only seemed inevitable. The symphony of joy played on and on somewhere in the backdrop of a Faded Dusk. Something had dawned back in time, somebody was dead. There was no funeral.
There was laughter all around. Like the sunrays glittering on a tranquil ocean, with the certainity of a Storm breathing far far away. There was time. Now she had all the time in the world. "We'll miss you," they had told her. She didnt respond, for, she never missed anything. She was beautiful. "And dont drink too much coffee, it aint good for your health" they added.

But little did they know that the harm had already been done. She had departed.
She reached. He laughed at the people she'd left behind. She smiled in return, "See where you were leaving me."

"I knew you wouldnt stay there, lady," he replied simply.

The colors felt alive. Black was not a color, anymore.

The lush green was being lent the hue of a golden sunshine by their laughter.
The wave of laughter spread across the fields, and the flowers bloomed with a freshness that was alien to the Earth.

He whispered, "I never knew....."

He looked at the black in the sky fading away into a prussian blue. Had he blinked, he'd never had seen how a single ray of light could bring the shades of Sunshine in a Dark Sky. How easily should it touch life in a never ending night sky. He could never blink now. He was alive. He could not afford to miss out life now.
He was happy leaving his future in the hands of a present drop of sunshine. He questioned the Ray about the stars. He loved them. She shook her head and the smile came from within her eyes, "I know....They will always be there", It seemed as if there were two stars in her eyes. And he thought if he could just keep looking in her eyes he wouldn't need the stars.

The sky kept on changing colors- like a life.

Black. Blue. Pink. Orange. Golden. Yellow.

Then it turned so bright that it was difficult to imagine the existence of darkness. Night had no meaning now. He studied the sky. He heard some voices. She strengthened her grip on his hand. He turned to look at her, see if she was scared. But her eyes showed something else. The excitement of being airborne for the first time in a lifetime. She laughed with him.

From where they both stood, they saw that there was life, after all. They cherished this life as a blind would cherish a new found pair of white and black so that he could see the colors.

This wasnt hope.
This was reality of a beautiful dream.

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.

Taste

It had begun.

And it was here to stay. At least I am not letting it go.
Silence. Silence of a storm brings more violence to the act itself. This, I thought, is the point when the fears depart only to let the void of a lifetime to set in. A vacuuming act.

A ray passes through it occasionally. It reminds me the taste of the coldness in a frozen strawberry. Ripe. Luscious.

It reminds me of my first-ever flight. Adrenaline. The thrill of being alive, and not being seen.

A golden field with the orange sun teaching me the meaning of freedom.
The vertical horizon that I discovered aboard a Kolkata-bound flight.
The first kiss and the joy of knowing how insatiable "insatiable" can really be.
It reminds me of a beautiful thorn on a Black Rose.
Promises beautifully kept and more beautifully broken.
It reminds me the silent answers of the Hunter pointing towards a more silent horizon in a faded blue sky, telling me that I wasn’t a hopeless case.

A funeral wherein I laughed and laughed. The birth of someone wherein I cried and cried.

Was there anything in this world that defined happiness and sadness? Events were events. How you faced them was entirely up to you. If you cried, or if you smiled.
Happiness, like life and death, is so relative.
The softest zephyr and an evening song of the most melodious symphony.
The most grateful blink.

The most shiny glitter in my eye. The loudest clap of red thunder on the black horizon. And how fast I ran, as I saw the rain approaching. I knew I would be wet, but I wanted the thrill of escape. A battle I wanted to fight for its thrill though I knew I'd submit blissfully.
Snap shots of life.

A ray fills the void and brings back a slide show of events.
Fears evaporated and only detachment settled in. On the greenest leaves of my eyes. Dew Drops. A sunrise would make them evaporate. Evanesce. Detachment. Indifference. Loss of sense. There was no sense of loss. Or gains, for that matter. Let the judge decide. My defense rests. The verdict of silence was accepted by me. The judge's pronunciation would not matter anymore. Noise.
And the silence was taking unbelievable forms now. I was amazed at this faceless entity. May be I was seeing myself. Bare. The tattoo was engraved. Happy Birthday to me.

A new beginning. A subsiding twilight, and the dawn of a starry night. The skies cleared. The hunter was there to welcome me. My sole companion in the midst of the most important journey of my life. I'd found this night in the treasure vaults of my dreams. I'd resurrected it. I shot up, and I felt the speed. I had begun. I was flying at the speed of thought. Airborne. And I beckoned the life to catch up with me. I teased the meteorites and the comets to catch me if they could. But the meteorites swung in between heavenly bodies and comets were married to the sun. A dimple surfaced on my cheeks. It felt so warm here.
I understood gravity now: I was defying it.

One day I looked back and I saw the metamorphosis in the world: as per the seasons- rain, winter, and summer. I was above this now.
I was flying, teasing the heavenly bodies, and the gods (whom the people never resurrected anymore). I blew up stardust in my wake as I covered my dangerous descent. I was lost forever.

I had to keep this secret. Was I ever coming back again?
And if, at this point, you could taste me, you'd know what rapture tastes like.

Rapture

It was a night I'd never forget. Rapture.

It was the night when the sky had never seemed so close before. It was a night when the stars had danced with me. Orion the Hunter, was smiling at me, and the frolic transcended from the cluster of stars. The zephyr was in a frenzy, touching me everywhere. Even my soul was touched. I looked up. They all looked down on me.
I smiled.

It was an euphoria new to me, and for once I didn't want anyone or anything to wake me up from this dream. Dream, because this was too beautiful to be a reality.

I was flying. Travelling light years at once. Crossing horizons. Nothing seemed impossible anymore. Nothing was dead anymore.
I was alive.
There was magic running through all of me. My feet were on the sky, and the ground beneath my feet was cool, virgin and glittering. May be these were the tiny drops of tears that I had cried on myriad nights before, on the Sea of Tranquility, with each tear drop falling off my eyes as a star below my feet.
The sky is my playground. I will be forever here, and still not tire.

My words will follow so long as Heaven and Hell would debate and deny my existence in their domain. And I know he'll always find me here. My words. The day, the night I'd stop, would be the day when I'd die for him.
Who decided whether we "lived" or "died", anyway? I could be here, my heart thumping, and my eyes open. But what if you stopped thinking about me? What if you stopped waiting besides your universe, for my Ray of Loght to escape it? Escape only to make you see yet another beautiful part of me. I would still be alive- for a doctor, but for you I'd be dead.
And I dont want to die.
I dont want him to stop thinking about me, waiting for me. Just as I would wait for him. I dont want to cease living in his mind, his world of dreams.

He is in love just as I am.

Nothing was forbidden. We will cross each other's worlds. My love wont be like that cursed Rose on the Grave, which was discovered, only to be declared that it was forbidden.
My love is not forbidden.
Nothing was, anymore.

I wanted to kiss the sunrays, I wanted to bathe in the moonlight, feel the warmth and the chill within. I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry.
I wanted to live.

Flying.
Dreaming.

Just when the sky had seemed out of reach and the horizon was a part of some other invincible world, my universe had been infused with cosmic beauty. And it was never going to be the same again.

"What is it with you?," they'd ask me.
"What?"
"Are you alright?"
"Just born."

I was powerful, once again. A person is born more than once. When he comes into this world, attempts of doctors give him life. But the person doesnt know that he IS born. And after that, he becomes conscious of the time when he IS born. He realizes that moment.

Life has just begun.

Happy Birthday to Me.

[Author's Note: This Post was created in January 2006]

The Eclipse Diaries

###A Highway###

The rain never stops. And nor does my migrane. For the past hours, I feel as if someone has taken my eyes out of their sockets. There is no blood.

I am now having a sense of time. Or may be I am just losing it. Sometimes, they come to me and observe me. The way I look up at them. After how many seconds my eyes blink. How I get goosebumps as they flash a bright light right in my eye. They fear me, it seems. I do not look at them. The floor is of naked stone, and is damp most of the times. My skin is white. I think it takes more than a frozen floor to make a rush of blood impossible. A fly keeps buzzing along my ear, just to see if I am still alive. My nails look black. No, I havent seen them, but I can feel that.

I hear the sound of the occassional rain splashing against the wall. Yes, there is a wall. I will not escape. I must not.

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.]

Extensions

Tangle versus Chaos
Dignity versus Ostracism

And so these wires must hang over your head
Blonde
Red
Copper
Multi-colored Streaks
Trying to hide a head of White
Or may be trying to hide nothing at all
Its only a vaccum that needs cover

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

Dillemma

A Morbid Soul lurking in the Sleepy land
It beckons to fold me in the corners of the night
I lay awake, watch the changing colors of the Sand
Like a magician's prestige Blind in Sight

I know not if the table can turn and destiny rebound
The flame of life keeps stealing a glance
Drink from the flame, where the Thrist was first found
I Enter the Gloom that I deserve, I celebrate and dance

Quest of a frozen dream keeps me awake
The stealth of life Lost by a mankind
Stolen by chance, there is a risk I need to take
I hold the cup that my lips find

Scintillating blindness too old for my Eye
You give up looking for Me, while I refuse to cry

Oscar

Actors, these
Smiling faces I see
Stealing a glance at me
And I smile indulgingly
Encouragingly...
It is a smile, after all

I know naught
If they go back to their wives and women
And shout and smoke and get drunk
I know naught
If they clean the dirt out of their nails by a toothpick
If they wipe their brow
with their two buck ironed, stuffed white branded shirt
I know naught
If they look at a girl and smear her
in the holiness of their heads
I know naught
If they yell at their mothers for having spent too much, forgotten too much, lived too much

But they sure deserve Oscars
For their poker fac-ing

I know naught
If they stole a glance out of nothingness and tortured their table
I know naught
If they bothered about their aging shoes, thinning hair, slipping time

Drip by drip
They never had a will to measure

I know naught
If they undressed me
with their smiling gentlemanly eyes
I know naught
If they displayed their wares through the books they read, women they slept with, and the hotels they stayed in

I know this
I am happy
With their faces, poker faces

Switch Off the Lights
Hand them the Oscar
And send them back home

The Eclipse Diaries

###A Forefront Cry### It is boring here. At moments I am seized with a killing boredom and at times, I am excited to the core - in anticipation of a well digged fight with the enemy. The invisible enemy. May be I am pitied against time. Time is our enemy, isn't it? It is also supposed to be god, then... the immaculate healer... and what not. And for me this time, time is the enemy. If more time shall pass... my edges shall be chipped off. Like a nail being stripped of it's sharpness. Like a dew being over burdened with every passing moment of the maturing dawn. I am sitting here, in the chunk of the wall. There is a water dripping nearby. The liquid makes it cold at nights. My skin has become sensitive to these changes. I sometimes wish that this skin peels off. The flesh is better to manage. With the skin growing in, there is always a hope attached. But when everything strips down, there is nothing. A room for hope that is quantified as naught. I want the flesh to ooze out blood so that I lose the realm of time, even.

Seated in a Wall

Time... well.. it's passing by

POW # 84190310

The Eclipse Diaries

###First Blood###

They say there are Signs.In the midst of any difficulty, ye shall always look for signs and then you'll be rescued. I always wanted to know.. who would come for rescue.. the Foo Fighters, angels, MI6.... or who... but I coud not ask and therefore I wasn't answered. The place where I am right now, offers no solace >> answers are a deal too great to expect >> either. In this darkness I can not see any sign.

I have been hearing a few loud voices when I have been awake and for the rest of the time, I can hear a deafening single continous beep. If I am alive, then there must be oxygen here. After the rib crack, I can feel something engraved over my left wrist. Some numbers. It took me 124 seconds to make that out. 8 Digits. This is the only sign I got till now. This.... %^#(.... is like a sweet poison.The light is everywhere around me, and yet I find myself flooded with blinding darkness. May be it is oozing out of me. It should make sense. My hands have been tied for some time.... days, may be. Eyes were blind folded when I first felt someone touching me. The kick was painful too. And after that, I have been in a blackout. There is no sense of time, or space here. Einstein would have liked to know.

Time Unknown,

Place Unknown,

- PoW # 84190310

Scintilla

He loved Mathematics. He had been counting the heartbeats that tormented him. He had once been counting the Fallen Trees in the landscape of his untraceable Memory. Memory... Ah... Where there is life, there is memory- and both of them were undeniable and passionate options for him. He had chosen the former, and the latter was a curse that followed. Life had been an option, and he was passionate about it. The curses surrounded him, questioned and answered his Identity. He stopped wandering, and the angels feared that one day he might reach Home. His turbulent peace was so well practiced that even the Storms thought for a moment before entering his skull. But when they formed... they left inclement memories, yet again. Like a Flashback visited too well. And remembered, too. On this particular night he walked counting. The tumultuous rain tried hard to make him blink. There was an ink of Prussian Blue in the night, and he smiled. It was going to be one of those nights, again, he thought to himself. Premises were so easily available. He kept walking for a couple of heartbeats, till he finally looked up. It’s like one of those moments where you safely presume everything to be routine, and all the faculties in your mind's department of Logic, stand to quorum, but that one blink of a misnomer sense makes you disheveled. And since he was a sesquipedalian delight, he knew better. So he looked up without stopping. The rain was straight tonight- unlike other nights. The storm was calm, unlike other sights. The Night sky had changed, too- as if it was trying hard to erase a spot in his memory. It stood right above his head, calculating, with shades of the darkest green it had ever manufactured, and the most opaque velvet it had ever smoked. He looked up. The rain hit so hard on his eyes, that after a split second he felt his eye balls floating in the rain water that had accumulated in his eye-sockets. The hurt in his eyes did not prepare him for the blindsight that was about to hit him in a split second's time.
*
The silver rain danced with her. As if it did not succeed in driving her back home. Creatures like her had always been a liability - frolicking on the Earth, the Sky and everywhere in between. They weren't even faithfully straying. She danced, then, knowing fully well the nuisance of her existence and the essence of her being. The black satin had rushed to her, to save itself from being dry. She had laughed, and it wrapped around her in a hurry. From the distance where he watched her, he was not sure where the blackness of her body came from... She was naked except for the Night. The Night always played tricks on his mind. And now he looked at the woman with a curse and a chuckle- his logic told him he was safe. But still he stood there, telling himself, reassuring himself that there could be no substitute or imitation. He looked at her, unfazed for the moment, in a captious manner. The wet, dark green leaves kissed his feet, his cheeks and his arms. It was that touch that initiated the Music. He could now hear his heartbeat increased by a thousand-fold intensity. The definition of infinity as provided by Mathematics did not impress psychology, after all. His heartbeat became the Thunder. He slowly noticed the symmetry of the woman's feet and the flashes of lightening let him a glimpse of her soul. If one could see Trance in a perfect symphony of asymmetry- it was him. His eye lids became heavy, his eye balls floated with the ecstasy dissolving in. He felt his heartbeat struggling to make a beat, out of the sound. He felt his feet fastened to the Earth. He felt the Storm trying to touch his soul. His layers were stripped, one by one... Until nothing remained except for his Soul. He was breathing the Sky. The lightening summoned him to the silvering crimson that flowed incessantly from her eyes, and that which led him into the Space and the Sphere of a captivating Freedom. His logic embraced madness and he felt his soul trapped in that moment. He could go back and rewind the entire chain of dews, and yet he could not break the Freedom. The Madness of her movements, the wetness of the moment invited him to a Universe - they had both seen each other then. He wanted to take his eyes off from that realm, to sit back and see her and himself caught in that forbidden moment and yet, he would not do so. He simply would not leave. The woman danced, holding his soul, challenging him to look elsewhere, to transcend in a light that always won over darkness. The Night challenged him to come undone, to lay still in that whirlwind of wonder, to dip into the Black, into the Silver. The Crimsoned lightening in her eyes teased him to put everything at stake. The Insanity lay beckoning. The paroxysm took his death.

The Undue Homage

And won’t the Sky fly over to the Sea

If the Thunder forsakes the Twilight?

Is there a better place for a Gypsy to be

Or shall he traverse with a Distanced Sight?