When Man becomes Stone...

When Planets are retrograde, Life moves backwards,

People become Places, and Places become Memories,

Sinners become Saints, and Saints become Ordinary.

When Grave becomes Cradle and,

Babies go back to Unborn,

Lovers-holding-hands become Strangers and,

Stranger becomes Unnamed

Life goes backwards...

When Conversations become Text and,

Text become no-beep

Phones do not ring a bell any more,

 ,Paragraph becomes Punctuation and,

Punctuation become the unspoken,

The Unspoken becomes Silence and

Silence, the Abandoned Words,

 When too much of Light becomes Darkness,
Darkness becomes blind,

And, Love becomes the Lovelessnes,

of one lifetime

WE become the STATUE,

Yes, the weather- stricken Statue,

With Softness over stone,

And Lovelessness of Love

Unable to move...

Repulsion

He religiously counted all the money and saved it in different lockers. She surprisingly found a five hundred rupee note from her old purse and felt happy. He ate his supper from the hotel and delivered exact change to the old waiter, who lost his son. She walked into to her favorite Dhaba restaurant and mercifully forgotten the balance money to be collected from the waiter. He noted down in his monthly planner, the exact day and time of his outings and returned home early before the darkness of 8.p.m. She aimlessly walked on to malls, mountains and streets, most often planning her trips after hitting the road. He ate timely food and avoided conversations. She drank untimely coffees and enjoyed the weather.He protected his vehicle inside the garage aware of the hike in fuel rates.She drove to the countryside to cherish the mangoes fallen on desolated roads. He believed none and distanced himself from all. She got acquainted to all and got the best friendship of one lifetime.

 .

       He referred to various editions of 'The Economist' and framed his life style. She read her favourite author up till 2.a.m.’s and wept out like a baby for the loss of characters. He visited Church every Sundays to attend the Mass. She walked into the church whenever she felt to talk to her God. He routinely recorded his accounts and expenses on his diary every night before sleep. She smiled back to her own image on the mirror and wrote out her heart on the favourite diary made of handmade texture. He set reminders to give missed call to his mother at 9 a.m.’s of every Saturdays. She rang up her mother every now and then, sharing her excitements over change of weather. He religiously searched for Divinity in his structure and schedules. She was wild and found the Divinity in her creative wilderness. He was Religion. She was spirituality. Both knew the other existed in some other part of the earth under the same wide open sky. And they never longed to meet... 

Daughter

   These are the days she is at home but she spends most of her time in her room. I have never seen her downstairs. If I ask, she reasons that she is held up with work. God knows what she does in there. Is life all about writing those things nobody is going to read? Life is about being like a normal girl. Why can’t she come down and learn some works in the kitchen? Why can’t she go to garden and do some watering? Not even combing her hair some days. And those unfolded clothes with safety pins not removed.  Unwashed coffee mugs and left over of eatables. Not working hard or clearing some competitive exams. She is not coming out of the hole that she lives in. I think she is under some meditation to madness. She doesn’t know to cook or wash or any house hold. I fear what her future would head to.

   She doesn’t even return to the calls of her relatives or grandparents. And if asked she says that time just slips out of her hand and it is not her fault. The music is played so soft that sometimes I have to trek up to the stairs to her room to see if she is alive or in comma. The talkative girl who was always hovering around me at once turned out be the most clueless stranger in home. To my hundreds of “Come down and have lunch baby”, there would not be any response. Sometimes there would be a whisper, “Send it up ma...Please”

   And if ever I push her door open, I see her staring out of the balcony. God knows what she finds there. There is nothing worth seeing to that side of the house except a railway track. I doubt if she is counting the number of bogies of train.

 In monsoon the creepers and branches of tree climb up to her room and no matter what, she would not let me do anything to them. Even if I threaten her that the snakes would find its way up, she never bothers. She can only see and hear the things, she wants to. She has always done that. And only when I shout, “Come down..Daddy has come. Let us have dinner”, she would honor the ground floor for a visit. 

   Sometimes she would be pushing her bed to the window side and scribbling things into her diary, staring into the dark sky. I never asked what she sees there. 

   I don’t know where she will end up. I fear the consequences of her life. May be in the way she lives, she finds those answers to those questions. The answers that I could never find in my life.

The silence after rain

Clouds withered in some rainy lamentations.  Universe draining out its stories in every water molecules of the earth, the evening appeared to be more meditative than before.  The silence after rain. It reminded me that I am on the lap of a woman, whom I lusted to every pore of her body. Lusted.  But never loved. The woman, whose words were little profound than her thoughts.   

There was a divine silence after her every speech.  That fine interval between her thought process and utterance.  In the silence after her words, I found the intensity of Universe. I found the Heaven and Earth, the continents floating in between Oceans, the woods leading to dry lands, the cities turning graveyards and all its philosophical burials. The  glory and lamentation of one whole generation, it contained.

There was a kind of insanity she placed in between every spell of her speeches. Sometimes it was sudden and rigorous.  Other times, it was slow and uneven.  The beautiful gap between her words. In that space, I found myself.   The insane me. My prejudices. My ego and attitude. Everything was within them. I was the man who chased her to the psychiatric chambers to discover peace.  The prison bars from where she mastered this art of speaking in silence of words. Her words might be silver but her silence was always golden.  She loved me.  And I never did.  

But sooner, I knew that I was falling for her silence. It never felt to be like a love.  I liked it when she kept quite. Without uttering any word.  Just keeping her 'other part of the self' deeply immersed in my  thoughts.  Her gaze. The silence thrown out from the beautiful corners of her eye and the first tear droplet, it produced. The intensity of its molecules.  The senseless words and the deep evocative meanings it made in silence. Everything was beautiful. Life made more meaning in its intervals. 

She waited for the day I fell for her fully with all my senses and soul. I lusted to her words. I loved its silence. My lust was never a full blown love.  I fell for her silence but never her speech. She continued waiting. And I continued my lust. But, never a full blown love. And, one fine afternoon in the silence of an unexpected rain when she stopped all the talking and stayed calm in her eternal silence, I fell for her completely. Wit the feelings of one lifetime into a love ‘full blown love’ as I said it always, I became her. Her eloquent silence. I never heard her after that. Where will she be now??

Alter-Ego

And when the two women had fallen for the same man, the world called them rivals. Those were not mere fascinations but close to perfect affairs. Everyone around asked, if it happened simultaneously. But who can say a ‘no’?  The two women believed and disbelieved it be so. When ‘X’ believed, the ‘Y’ disbelieved. And when ‘Y’ believed, the poor ‘X’ had plenty of disbelief. However, man being in the center of field was attracted to both the unlike poles like a bar magnet. There was only a thin line of boundary between being in love, disagreements, heart aches, patch ups, reunion and love makings to both the women. Both thought that they ruled his heart. But his heart had attained freedom beyond the boundaries of their rules. They governed him.  And he ungoverned. So sometimes, the three; two women and their man in between formed a perfect triangle. 

Both the women must have been similar somehow, somewhere. They might be certainly different. The two repulsive poles, those were made attractive because of the single magnet. But each time he gets to both, there must be certain common traits that pull him close. The woman, ‘X’ was so submissive inside while the woman ‘Y’ was much dominant. ‘X’ was very much feminine in beauty while ‘Y’ appealed him with her nature of character.  But once undressed, both the women appeared to be same. They behaved alike on bed. Both aroused him.The same softness, bouncy pounds of skin, the thin line between the breasts and waist, the artistic curves of their hips. Sometimes the hugging arms. Other times, the resting shoulders. Both lusted to his soul but neither could reach that point. He switched his roles between the two women. He loved both and unloved them. The colorless chameleon, he was. Sometimes, a male chauvinist...

Sometimes the middle of the triangle disappeared. The man.  It was like, he was there but he was not there. And the triangle became a well defined straight line. A diminishing point. Blurred out, it was. And when the man vanished, X and Y lusted for each other. The truth bites bitter. Both never loved the man. The fonder they grew upon the man, the stronger they loved each other. Both flaunted to get the attention of each other through man as the center point. Sometimes they were second-self. Sometimes they were alter-egos. Sometimes they were bad omens. But most of the times, they were in love - may be lesbians or something similar to that sort.