Those Eyes

This one that I am going to share with you now is something I wrote last year in February. I was in London on a business trip, it was my last night and I was miserably drunk. She was a regular reader of my other blog which I once had. She approached me on yahoo messenger that night and we had a long conversation. It was indeed a night of literary verbiage and shared soliloquies. I did not sleep the whole night that one and was up chatting with her. We shared our lives, our secrets and a lot more. While on my way back on my early morning flight I kept thinking of her, kept drinking and wrote this out. She is no longer in my life now, left about one and a half month ago. But then again que sera sera….

My life is brilliant.
My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I'm sure.

She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'Cause I've got a plan.

You're beautiful.
You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.

I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.

Yeah, she caught my eye,
As we walked on by.
She could see from my face that I was,
Fucking high,
And I don't think that I'll see her again,
But we shared a moment that will last till the end.

You're beautiful.
You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.

Song You’re beautiful by James Blunt

Sitting in a space which probably is just enough for a man to crouch in am living my life at a speed of 974 kilometers per hour at a height of 11142 meters above the sea level. I have slept 5.5 hours combined in the last two days and combined have already gulped down a full bottle of chardonnay, 11 pints of beer, 5 glasses of red wine a couple of brandies and have just asked these angels floating in these clouds with me to please now get me some cognac. My eyes are swollen, blood red and tired. I have watched two movies back to back, read 60 pages on philosophy, argued about the entire Asian eco-politico-social system with my fellow sufferer for 2 hour at length and though am confused am dodgy, am hallucinating and am feeling as if am dead with all these clouds around me still - I can not give up thinking about those eyes.

Been a couple of hours since I saw them for the first time and probably the last. Been a couple of hours since I tried to seduce them. Tried to make them look into mine and drown them. How often does it happen, that the hunter becomes the hunted? You are menacingly prowling the ripe grounds swarming with life looking for your next pray and as soon as you get a hint, a premonition, a hunch of your target you take an aim and fire your best shot and just at that precise moment your target turns around and she fixes you with a magnificent stare which sends a terrible bolt of realization shooting down your spine which enlightens you that what you were looking at was nothing but a mere reflection being cast in a wall of glass and that the projectile you just hurled has ricocheted and is running screaming towards you and no matter how much a part of your brain flashes the red warning light and sirens and instructs your entire muscular system to move, scram, begone, still the firm gaze hypnotizes you so bad that you just chose to ignore all such flashes of wisdom and stand completely vulnerable to the rushing bolt just so that you can see see some more of those magnificent, sparkling, pearly, deep, hypnotic, whispering eyes.

Just how often?

Not much I would assume for had it been a phenomenon that should occur like a beat in a symphony after every fixed interval of time or maybe that unexpected sound that comes in frequently when in the height of rhythmic ecstasy you smash the guitar on the drums, I shall content myself with the satisfaction of the thought that a hunter like myself would then prepare himself for the eventuality of the coming mirage and either chose not to hunt for a while or maybe and in more likelihood better prepare himself with certain more amount of exercise and caution. But what does a man got to do when it happens for the first time? When all it takes to render him helpless, hopeless and to a good extent even pathetically desperate is nothing more than a hypnotic look from two sapphires studded and shining in a milky white cloudy night!?
How does a man fight then!

How do you make your escape when the eyes not only look, seduce and hold you but also whisper in your ears from such a distance as if the very wind is their slave, calling you closer and closer just like the Sheila in the ocean who with their enchanting music cast a binding spell over innocent sailors, over their rationale, logic rendering them completely helpless and lulllabying them to their doom. When you yourself want to be lured and possessed. When all that matters to you in the world for that instant is a look of admiration reflecting back in those crystals. When you want to give in and not fight and lose and not win.

Do you have time to react? Yes! Yes you do! You get a whole heartbeat’s length of time! People tell me that much is not enough and I ask them, really? It takes a heartbeat to look and feel. It takes a heartbeat (or a skip of one) in which endless words are spoken and heard and felt without any effort to communicate being made. It takes a heartbeat for a chill to energize those neurons so badly that every pour on your body is standing up in attention. It takes a heartbeat's length of time to fight and surrender and give in. A heartbeat's length of time in which an eyelash flashes, hides and reveals those waters again and pulls you so rapidly towards them as if someone hooked you from the navel and gave a massive tug making your feet lose the ground beneath them finally drowning you. It takes a heartbeat to take a click of those flashing eyes and imprint it on your memory forever which no amount of time can erase and which probably you would still see when you shall lie down for the last time in your life.

And they tell me it is not enough time?

I know those eyes would sweep through this page sooner or later. I know those eyelashes would flicker and batter and there would be a thought if this is really about them. Who knows probably they are here right now, on this very word? Probably there is a smile dancing on those lips now, probably those eyes have flashed for an instance onto messenger to check if I am online, probably now there is a urge and a hitch at the same time to leave an offline message for me, probably those eyes are a little mad now for the way I read through them and their inability to shut me off, and probably a certain mischief is now dancing in them toying with the idea on how it would be to give in just for once.....

Probably.

It was all about those eyes in whose temptation I allowed myself for a certain while to live the life of a hopeless, desperate romantic that I once was. Pardon me if I do not make much sense here given my current physical and mental state.

My plane just flew over Singapore and instinctively I arched my neck and looked down out of the window.

Probably......

You're beautiful.
You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.

I walk a lonely road

I walk a lonely road

The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me

'Til then I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

Song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day

If I were to ask you how much time do you think you will take to recount your entire life, to visit your past again in your mind, to ponder over every decision you ever took and wonder if it was right or wrong, to visit every heart break you ever had and relive every orgasm, to think of all the people you loved and forgive all those you hate. What would your answer be? An hour or two? A week maybe?

One second.

I remember walking down a lonely road and it has indeed been the one I have ever known. It takes me to my office and brings me back. It is my solace, my haven, my escape and is much more closer to being me than anyone else since it is in real terms of the word-“lonely”. No one takes it but I. Yes I indeed remember that road.
I also remember a warehouse on the road. A deserted colossal structure with shattered windows, broken wrought iron gates and high walls. It is along one of those walls that I walk. The sun is out on my right shinning brighter than ever on my face as if trying to burn me to ashes and the huge wall on my left trying to make me feel dwarfed by the sheer virtue of its height while I try and take each step quicker and quicker not in my haste to get anywhere but just so that I am able to escape the combined onslaught of these two forces governing my psyche one of which is natural and the other man made. I trot with my head resolutely bent down my feet pounding on the asphalt one after the other with such precise rhythm as if they are not my own but pieces of a machine moving in tandem one after the other. Sweat is eventually beginning to pour out on forehead and would soon dance its way along my face and start dribbling down on the road just ahead of me. How fascinating this is. My sweat pours out of my body and drops on the ground just ahead of my feet. That ground that I have not yet traveled, that part, which is still to come under the pounding of my feet, is yet to be explored by me, to which I do not owe anything right now. Yet before taking my liberty to stomp onto the freedom of that virgin I first must make my due payment, my tax to trod on. What is more amazing is that it is not some one whose making me pay this tax as I would like to call it but just my body and that blazing hot red mass of matter in the sky both of which I can not try to reason with. I drip and I walk and I simply can not do anything about it.

How fascinating indeed.

Neither can I do anything about my companion. Oh yes! I do have a companion, someone who is walking right along me, making sure I am never alone. It is my shadow. It always walks besides me. I can always find it right here. Though it does not talk to me or amuse me or share my laughter or my tears or for that matter even my sweat yet it is always here-my dead reflection on a dead wall. Dead? Of course dead, for it speaks naught, it cries naught, it laughs naught. It does not have a face I can remember, it does not have eyes I can see in, it does not have heart I can share my pain with.

Conscience and Desire are perhaps a man's worst enemies and best of friends. One would make you do such forbidden acts that you can not even dream of doing and the other would make you feel so miserable when you are done with, that you just want to somehow kill yourself. And yet again these two force you to give up your seat to a lady carrying a child in a bus and propelling you sometimes to do something extra ordinary of such magnitude in your life that you end up as Mahatma Gandhi, Kennedy and even Bill Gates. The desire to explore shall carry you to the edge of a cliff where your conscience would subtly push you off.
Lost in my thoughts I must have taken some wrong turn for I do not know where am I wandering to. Somehow the wall is on my right and the sun is on my left. I am perplexed! I don’t know what is going on. For though I was not paying attention to the direction my feet were carrying me in but I am so used to this road that I daresay I can take a wrong turn.
Something didn’t feel right. I had a feeling in my stomach intensifying with every passing second. Something was just not feeling right. I was looking left and right trying to make some sense of what was happening.

And then I saw it running-my shadow! It was sprinting along the length of the wall running way ahead of me. Yes it was mine, yes I am positive for there is no one around me till miles. I could do nothing but see it run ahead on the wall, sprinting and jogging.

I had just a second but I felt it. I felt the rush of the wind coming towards my hair, I felt the cold touch of the butt before it made contact with my skull before it knocked me out.

Time passed. Some hours or maybe some weeks. Maybe a life ended. Maybe I died and got reborn.

I am lying down. Someone is screaming. No I do not want to open my eyes or wake up. I am comfortable, cozy. I wish to Lord they would stop screaming. The voices are getting louder and louder. Oh damn! I can not take it anymore. I stir breaking the comfortable position my body had become so used to from lying down for so long. The first wave of consciousness hit me and along came deafening noise which rattled me right down to my soul. I jerked and sat up. I am on a stage, there are gothic figures screaming and dancing all around me. They are playing music.-hard rock, metal, deafening music. The screams are shrill and high pitched. Jumping and dancing all around me pointing at me and singing in a strange tongue which I can not comprehend these figures resembling monsters straight out of hell are entertaining a huge crowd. There are bodies as far as my eyes can reach. Everyone is using the same tongue. I do not know what they are chanting. My sitting up straight seemed to have enthused a fresh wave of energy throughout the crowd. Everyone is screaming, jumping, pointing figures at me.
And there I saw it-my shadow. Mute as ever it was jumping as hard as it could. and though there is no face, eyes, features that I can remember or recognize it by I am still sure it is my shadow. It is weird and the oddity of it was never clear to me until this point here. If I were to draw an example it would be something like picking your cell phone out of 3 other cell phones of the same make, model and color from a table. You just know its yours. You don’t need to check or to make sure.

I knew it was mine. I saw it and I had a weird feeling it was looking straight at me, right into my eyes. The meaningless babble of the crowd began to take shape, as if a picture is emerging by itself slowly out a pool of colors which were dribbled on the floor. I could make out what they were screaming. It was repeated incantation of just one word-Kill.

Kill, kill, kill.

I felt like a gladiator in an amphitheatre. A gladiator who has been thrown in the middle of wild savage animals and for whom the crowd is bursting with enthusiasm to see some flesh ripped of and blood being poured. It is like chattering of a sacred hymn in a temple. Everyone is on the same page, everyone is united and everyone knows just what to say at any precise moment in a singing tone.

Kill, kill, kill.

The chattering is getting louder. It is filling my ears and reaching my brain. My brain which is already thumping with a frenzy of activity from within. There are questions floating all around like sharks in an angry ocean, and my conscience is like a lost sailor amongst them.

Kill, kill, kill.

I looked all around me in a haste. No one I know but my shadow, which is now being hoisted on the shoulders of these gothic figures. Fresh energy is seeping throughout this menagerie. My shadow is on some shoulders. It is hopping and jumping and making way towards the stage where I lay. Everybody wants to touch it, to give it a part of their shoulders to step on. It is like the plate carrying sacred incense in Indian temples which is passed all around the devout participating in the holy prayer to touch and be blessed. My shadow is advancing rapidly towards me.

Kill, kill, kill.

A final hop and it is on the stage, facing me. The crowd has gone silent. The silence is so thick I can hear my every breath explode with a bang right in front of me. I do not know what is going to happen. I wish my shadow had eyes, eyes to give me a hint to let me know what is coming next. But no, that is not to be. Here we are facing each other. My shadow raised its right hand slowly pulling it up bringing in front of me clenched as a fist. Am I to take it? Grab the fist, bend down and kiss it? What am I expected to do? What is everyone waiting for! Torn as I am in all these confusions and questions the thumb popped up from the dark clenched fist in front of me.
The fist turned and the thumb pointed downwards.

Kill, kill, kill

The crowd erupted! The verdict had been passed. My shadow whipped his hand like a blade and the next thing I was looking at was a 9mm barrel of a revolver staring right between my eyes. The last thing I heard was the cocking as the trigger was pulled.

One second.

One second was all it took for the bullet to leave the barrel and penetrate my sanity. One second was all I had to live my life again. I had flashes, flashes lasting minutes, how I don’t know. I could see everything again. I as a child, I growing up, I losing my loved ones. I felt the pain of all my heartbreaks and relived all my orgasms. I hugged all those I loved and said good byes. After a long time I thought of God and said my prayer. I felt the chilled wind of London freezing my lungs skin and scorching heat of Delhi burning my skin. I lived every second and every year of my life again.

And I was happy, truly exotic on leaving the world finally.

The alarm went off and I realized I am late for the office. Damn! Cant even die in peace. Better get up. I have to go to the office and a road to walk. Maybe as they say my morning dream would turn out to be a reality....

An Ode to Death

I went to a funeral today. As it stands I am in London right now and I have some relatives who have been based here for almost an eternity. And a human being being a social animal that he is, they obviously made acquaintances with people living around them or with those who had chosen to migrate to UK almost at the same time as they did.

One of such acquaintances of theirs was blessed with a very lovely charming intelligent and a beautiful daughter.

She was 24.
She was a meritorious students studying in one of the top notch universities of UK.
She had numerous scholarships and certificates to her name.
Her family is one of the richest in UK and most influential back home in India.
She committed suicide last week.
I never met her or knew her.
I was moved beyond my deepest emotions.

We lost our way to the crematorium and reached 5 minutes late. The service had started and the hall was packed. With many others we stood outside the hall in the chilly wind listening to all the family members paying their tributes to her. I could not see anything. I was there, standing outside the hall in a wind which was blowing with such an intensity that it might as well would have carried me with itself and with such a chill that I wished if it does indeed carry me somewhere it please be the fires of hell so that I not only get to warm myself but also reach my final destination and finally escape these dreaded talons of this life.

But no I am not that fortunate, am I? Had I been fortunate to get what I wish for, would have I ever wished to escape this vicious circle of life!

No it did not happen. No matter as much as I wished, yet I was there standing outside all the while listening to a voice booming over my head from a speaker. Wondering just why did I agree to come to this funeral in the first place when I don’t know anyone, when I have no relations with the deceased and her family other than that of humanity which as I have learned to understand the hard way does not really matter in this world and when I have long since lost my capacity to be touched by emotions such as grief.

And then she started speaking. I didn’t know who she was, perhaps her mother, or her aunt or maybe some grieved friend. I did not know then nor do I know now. But she started speaking and I was glued to where I stood. She started narrating a small poem she had written and suddenly I was washed with waves and waves of ice cold realizations which crashed over me with such fervor that the wind suddenly felt as burning ciders on my skin and just one question suddenly sprang up in my brain and spread its tentacles through my neural system with such rapidity that before I could have even realized its presence sweeping through my conscience, there it was flowing along with my blood all through my body and having already proclaimed and proven its dominance over my capacities to rationalize it was now trying to puncture that invisible barrier which separates my mortal self from my soul all the while screaming just one thing

“So what matters then in the end?”

I have been trying hard, very hard that I do not have to leave London now. I have been trying harder to clinch a job in the United States of America. I have been trying desperately that I do not have to go back to India or face my mortifying endless repeated act which us the denizens of this planet have coined job. I have gone from pillar to post to make sure I am always in touch with the “right” people, eating and drinking in the right places and made contact with the right authorities as much as I possibly can.

Would it matter to me in the end where I am burnt, dust to dust and ashes to ashes? Would I care if my car got its proper parking space or that my employer was not racist or my green card application was accepted or what my peer think of me whether I look good or am I looking to thin or am I looking too fat or whether the “right” people are attending my last journey or whether it is being organized at the right venue with kosher food and vintage wine and am dressed immaculately and I do not have stubs on my face and my hair is not messy and have they selected the best of my photographs to place along my body and is everyone seated properly and and and…….?

Would anything matter to me when I finally sleep?

Why then am I living my life too hard? Why am I always trying to be an edge apart and a step above those around me? Why do I hate some and love none? If nothing has to come to me in the end, nothing can give me all these comforts which I so desire now when I shall so need them the most why do I strive to possess it? Why then am I living now when I have to die tomorrow!? What is the purpose, the aim the final destination of my life?

My death?

That is? My life ends? Why then try so hard! Why study or work or amass wealth or love some when at the end I am going to be all alone, just me myself and I, stripped of all that I earned owned possessed and isolated of all whom I loved? Why why and why! I do not understand this. Maybe I am not supposed to, maybe I am just supposed to try my best shot at this life and take things as they come to me. But then if I am to do just that I do not understand what shall make me different from my vacuum cleaner or my TV or my car all of which can neither think or ask or analyze. All of them just do for what they are built. They have no power whatsoever to modify what is to be made of them or what is to finally become of them. My car can do little if I push it of a cliff and destroy it. My TV can not ask me why do I change channels rapidly but can only do what I wish for it to do.

Am I not like them then?

Or maybe I am worse, for all such things as cars and TVs have a purpose for which they are built. What purpose was I created for? Is there any or am I just simply a byproduct of human love? Am I worse than even the most minutest piece of machinery?

No I am not and I know that. The reason, the one thing that distinguishes me from a mechanized motorized pile of steel is my power to think and feel. And then again therein lies the cause of my misery. Why do I have this power to question the Lord when I am deprived of the ability to make him answer me! Why do I feel joy and pain when I am nothing but a puppet on this vast stage who can do little if his creator chose to end his part and pull his string?

She went on and on. Her pain was beginning to pierce me, seeping through these pores on my skin and slowly gradually mixing with my blood as if my own. I knew not why was I moved, I knew not what connection if any existed and I knew not what could I do to make her stop. Her narrations spoke of time well spent a life well lived and a death well embraced. Oh yes she was asking questions too. With her lament and her cries she was asking Lord again and again why did He have to make this 24 year old beautiful talented girl kill herself. And as He does to me, he chose not to answer her no matter her wails and sobs. The Church was quiet, the crowd was quiet and He was quiet.

Finally she stopped. Of sheer exhaustion or emotion I do not know. But yes she felt quiet. For a long time no one spoke no one breathed. We all stood quiet, very quiet. All waiting for Him to finally speak and sooth His bereaved, destroyed, devastated daughter.

He was silent still.And then there was music. Ustaad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s remarkable voice seemed as if a glass made of fine china had been delicately shattered. He sang and sang and sang. People started moving, everyone as if cajoled from a deep trance. A line began to form. We moved with the crowd of humanity which somehow now seemed more united and connected. Everyone was moving with just one aim, to hug her parents and cry and light a small little candle where she would finally be laid to rest.

And I who is ever unable to shed a tear could not do even that. I just carried my dead self back to the car heaved my body onto the seat and came back much like a dead body riding in a coffin only that my journey has not yet ended.

Rest in Peace Meeto. I was not fortunate enough to know you but I feel as if we never have been strangers. One day I will cry, and I will cry for you then. Till such time I am your guilty, forgive me.