HOME

   I open the door to this place I belong. A place where time stands still, where nothing has changed. A place that remains untouched by the vicissitudes of life. I open the windows and smell the fresh air. A cool ocean breeze blows through the window, as if to welcome me back. The evening sunlight flitters in like a welcome guest, as it always had. I watch the last embers of the fading light play with the gently swaying coconut trees outside. They cast long shadows in my room, forming monsters that dance with the wind. The dying of the light paves way to a beautiful sunset, the horizon painted in hues of orange and pink, growing darker by the minute. I have watched many a sunset through these windows, and yet its beauty captivates me now, like it did the first time. I feel thankful, that in this ever-changing world, this place and this sunset has stayed the same.
 
   I dust off my armchair, grab a book and throw my legs over the window sill, as I have done many a hundred times. Soon my mind begins to wander and I contemplate this moment and this place. This is my niche, my own small corner in the world.  A place where I forget and stay forgotten by the rest of the world. It is in this place that I spoke my first words and where I learnt to read. It’s in the yard outside that I’ve skinned my knees learning to ride a bike and broken countless windows playing cricket. This is the only place in the world with my pictures on the wall, and my trophies and medals in a shelf, slowly gathering dust. It is here that I’ve spent my entire childhood, and my years through school. This is where I’ve cried myself to sleep and also where my greatest ideas were born. This is where I’ve lost myself in sorrow and in solitude, and also where I’ve picked myself up again, a little stronger that before. Here, I’ve grown up and this is perhaps the only place where I am truly myself. As I close these doors, I open my mind.
 
   Within these four walls, my thoughts flow unconfined and my hopes run free. Within these four walls, the walls I’ve built around myself come tumbling down. My imagination runs free here, unfettered by the cares of my life, and my dreams take to the sky. I may shut myself from the world outside, but in here I’m in my own world. I may be alone, but in the quiet of my room I can hear my thoughts louder than ever, and I’m never lonely. If I’m silent enough, I can even listen to the low undertow of feelings trickling through my mind, which I never notice otherwise. Sometimes I just let that undercurrent flow and at others I dive into it, and let myself drown in it. When I’m here, I let myself feel what I truly feel without restraint or caution. I dare to explore the deepest and darkest recesses of my mind without fear of what I may find, because in here I’m safe. The rest of the world is a blur to me, merely figments from a half-remembered dream. This is my world, my kingdom, here I am whole. This is my sanctuary, here I am at peace. I am where I belong, I am home…

Coincidence...

Coincidence, that’s all anything really is. It’s all anything ever is. Every moment up to this has been a part of a long chain of events, each link of it connected to another. The chain keeps growing longer every second, and new links are being forged as we speak. These links have been wrought, in part, by the situations we go through. A good part of it can also be attributed to the flurry of people we meet, whose lives have coincided with our own. We are like particles that collide, both of us change for the one moment we meet. But then we drift apart, never to meet again.

There are a few though, who linger long enough to leave an indelible mark on our lives, in ways both good and bad. There are people we hold close to our hearts, the ones who have been able to break through our shells and see our true selves. Then there are the ones who, perhaps unwittingly, have caused us hardship, pain and made us hate the world at some point in our lives. But ultimately their actions have caused us to reorient our perspectives, to reflect and grow stronger. And there are countless other people, who are but evanescent to us, mere flashes in our peripheral vision. Yet they affect our lives in unimaginable ways. They are like dominoes, who upon their fall cause a chain of events, one leading to the next. To these we remain totally oblivious, until we are caught in one of these chains ourselves.

Each of us is bound by this law of causality. Of one event causing another, which in turn becomes the cause of another. But imagine, what if one domino from this chain fell in a different way, at a slightly different angle. It would wipe out an entire chain of effects, but would in turn lead to a whole new pattern.  Imagine that your friend gave you a great book and you had decided to read it at home, rather than go to a party. But what if this party was where you would meet someone who eventually became your best friend? What if you got stuck in traffic and missed the train where you ran into the person who turned out to be your first crush? What if you picked a different job, and moved into a different city than the one where you met the love of your life? And what if they had made different choices on the same days?

Our lives would be entirely different without these little coincidences. In a sense, we owe a part of ourselves to this inextricable web of causality, for it has shaped our lives and our personalities. We are not completely enslaved by this law, yet we are never free from it. We are free to make our own choices but no one can predict where each of our choices would take us. Every action we take, or inaction, would have its own effect. These effects would cause further effects, and a chain reaction starts whose end is beyond our ability to foresee. This chain of events could change absolutely nothing, or it might alter the course of our lives, for better or for worse. We can never know for certain, until we tread that road.  

So, what we can do is accept that life is a leap of faith. You can make your choices, but you can’t know for certain where these choices will take you.  When you are at a crossroads you can see where the different roads lead to, but you can’t predict the twists and turns in the road. Where one road ends and another begins, you know not. All you can do is hope that your path and your choices take you to what you truly desire. So have faith in yourself and enjoy the journey. 

I Just Want to Know You Better

I still remember that day like it was yesterday. It was a cool September morning, the summer heat had finally subsided and autumn was beginning. The sky was covered with white fleecy clouds, gently flowing in the morning breeze and the Sun was mellow in its warmth, as if it was just waking up after a long night’s sleep. It was a great day to be out travelling and that’s exactly what I was doing. I had a few friends along and we were in the beautiful city of Vienna, with the whole day ahead of us to enjoy the sights and sounds of the city at our own pace. As with everything, each of us wanted something different from the city, to experience a unique facet of it first, and so we decided that we would part ways for now. I was still undecided on what to do, checking my backpack for a map and taking out my ‘to see list’, trying hard to figure out what to do when I first saw her.

I would have liked to recall this memory as love at first sight, that we knew that there was a spark between us the moment our eyes met, but it was none of that. We were two strangers, in a strange town, in a world that grew stranger by the day. We were people travelling along different paths, paths which were to meet due to some stroke of coincidence on that day. I was taking a breather, to clear my head, and that’s when I saw her. She seemed confused, lost, literally as well as figuratively in the throng of the city, but she seemed to be enjoying it too. Her feet were weighed down by indecision as to where to go, but that couldn’t weigh down the smile on her face. And that made it all the more irresistible, the quiet confidence she had in the fact that she could enjoy the journey, even though she was lost.

Maybe I was staring for too long, or maybe it was meant to be, but she looked up and she saw me. A part of my brain was yelling at me to look away and wipe that sheepish grin off my face, but I was too dazed to listen. I thought I knew what was going to happen next, I was half expecting an angry, indignant look that would say “Leave me alone, ******* “, but strangely enough that didn’t happen. She matched my smile, and for a moment I was the one who was left confused. Maybe she saw the map I was holding up, or maybe she sensed that I was lost too. She slowly walked towards me, and by some inexplicable force I started walking towards her too.

I always believed that the first words between two people were the hardest, but I was wrong. She spoke first, a cursory greeting, I replied. The small talk started, “The weather was great”, “The city was beautiful”, and it ended as quickly as it started. But the conversation didn’t. In a rare moment of intuition, I was left feeling that I could talk to her about anything I wanted and she could do the same too. Maybe she felt it too, and that could be why we couldn’t stop talking. We started walking towards the nearest landmark, a famous waterway from where we had to take boats that would take us our separate ways. But soon enough our words made us lose track of our steps. We lost our way over and over, but we were more lost in each other’s words.

And what did we talk about? Everything and nothing, all at once. We talked about our thoughts, our feelings, about our own lives. We talked about our past, our present and the future as we saw it. One conversation would open the door to another, one subject completely unrelated to the next. We talked about the things we had learnt and joked about the countless mistakes that had we made. We talked, and we listened and we laughed. About books and music and movies. About love and loss. And on and on it went, from the history of the place to World War III.  The conversation went from the evolution of life to its eventual extinction. We lost track of time and our way, but never once did we lose track of each other’s words.

We finally arrived at the waterway and our paths were about to diverge. I knew that it would happen, yet I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of regret. Couldn’t we have taken a more winding road, couldn’t our paths cross for a longer time? We said our goodbyes, much like we said hello, “Stay in touch” and “Enjoy the journey” and we went our separate ways. But can we really move away when our mind stayed still?

From there on I was blind to the sights of the city and deaf to its music. I was lost again, in my thoughts. All I could think of for the rest of the day was the conversation we had, and how much we had left unspoken. I kept longing to hear her sweet voice and the melody it played to my mind. I missed the moments of silence that I enjoyed between the end of one conversation and the start of the next. I missed being able to talk and be listened to completely and unconditionally.

It was one thing to fall in love at first sight, to be bewitched by a person’s pulchritude, to be in awe of their beauty. But it was another to be enchanted by their words, to admire the beauty of their mind and the depths of their thoughts. If you could fall in love for no reason, couldn’t you as easily fall out of it? But if you were to be swept away the force of a person’s mind, by the sheer originality of their thoughts and the honesty of their feelings, then it is likely that you have found something equally precious. You would have someone whom you could talk to for hours on end, but not about trivialities or mere banter. You have someone to whom you could open your mind to, knowing fully well that they have opened theirs to you. And in their mind, you have a mystery to unravel, a treasure trove of wisdom to unearth, an unexamined land to know and understand. And just maybe, trying to understand them might help you find something about yourself that you never knew.

As I sat along the side of the boat, flowing along with the majestic Danube River, there was a mild spray of water cooling my face. There was a soothing breeze, bringing the salty fragrance of the ocean from afar. There was beauty to be seen all around, but my mind elsewhere, littered with doubts. There were so many things that I wanted to know about that beautiful stranger, so many questions that I wanted answers for. I wanted to know what her favorite color was and her favorite dish. I wanted to know what she felt after her first kiss. What was her take on life’s meaning? I would have done anything to know what she dreamed about. There was so much I wanted to know, so much I wanted to listen to, if only there was more time with her.

I was woken up out of my daydream, feeling terribly forlorn, by the buzzing of my phone. I wanted to be left alone, to be washed over by the wave of longing that I felt, yet the buzzing did not stop. I slowly brought myself to pick up the phone, taking my own sweet time with it. “Hello” the caller said in her sweet sweet voice, and there was a long pause. And in that moment, all of my pain vanished. My heart erupted with joy and the smile on my face showed it, and I knew that everything has changed.

The Road Goes On...

He stood at a crossroads, silently staring at the grey horizon. The full moon was sinking, growing paler and paler and it would soon disappear under the light of the morning sun. He knew that this happened every day, but today it felt different. It was as if the setting moon was a sign of goodbye, of letting go of yesterday’s worries, of leaving the past behind. One part of his journey was ending, and another about to begin.

The cool morning air entered his lungs and each breath seemed to clear his mind. As he looked back in his mind, he could see how the winding road he had taken, with all its unexpected twists and unpredictable turns had brought him to this point in time. A long distance back, he could see where he had started out. He couldn't help but smile at how innocent, how naive he was back then. So optimistic, his dreams ran wild, unfettered by the chains of reality. The journey had started out with the highest of hopes, the promise of treasures and of new experiences driving him forward. There were mountains to climb and dragons to slay, exotic places to visit and beautiful women to fall in love with. The journey promised him everything, happiness, fun, peace, love…

But some promises were made, just to be broken. Most of the promises were a mirage. He would see one on the edge of the horizon, but when he reached for it, it was never there. Illusions, that’s all they were. Cruel tricks of the mind, played just to entice the traveller to trudge along on his journey. And what few treasures were there, they were concealed within the trickiest of mazes. They required extraordinary efforts to unearth and yet most of them were so fragile, one wrong move and they broke into shards like glass.

When the journey began, the whole world was his stage. There was so much to see, so much to do and so much to be experienced. He thought that all he had to do was wait for the right opportunity, for the right person and the right place. And wait he did, but what he waited for never came to be. He started having an inkling of a doubt that maybe the journey wouldn't be all he dreamed it would be. But he was quick to throw away that thought, and it lay in some forgotten recess of his mind.

There were fellow travellers along the way, moving in the same direction, having the same dreams as his. In time he learnt to trust them, to listen to them and to laugh with them. He loved to listen to their stories, and sometimes he would make up his own. He would find time to go for a swim with them on a hot day, and to make a fire for them when the days got cold. He grew closer to them and the journey was all the easier for their presence.

The road had its fair share of perils along the way. Sometimes there were ruffians and rogues, older travellers waiting to pounce on fledglings like him, taking advantage of his inexperience. They found a strange sense of pleasure in making him do their bidding, having him run errands and making him a part of their frivolous jokes. Eventually their tough exteriors softened and they started treating him as an equal. He had far bigger problems whenever he had to pass through a city, though. There were guardians, drunk in the arrogance of their power, overconfident in their false knowledge, who would allow him to pass only if they deemed him fit. They would pose to him all sorts of riddles, whether they made sense or not, that he had to answer if he wanted to enter the city. Sometimes they would even make him demonstrate the skills he acquired through his travels if he was to be deemed worthy. And once he somehow managed to get past them, there were be stone tablets and rolls upon rolls of papyrus that he had to needlessly fill in order to get through. By the time he got out of the city he would be jaded, but was grateful for getting through and happy to be travelling again.

Yet, his thoughts kept going back to what he dreamed for the journey to be. Day by day he began growing frustrated, worried that his road wouldn't lead him to riches or adventure or love. The harder he tried to push away those feeling, the harder they got to push away, till they hit him smack in the face. The road wasn’t lined with roses or paved in marble, it was rocky and weeds grew along the path where there should have been flowers. He was so angry, at all the stories he had heard that made him dream, of all the lies that he had filled his head with. He cursed that no one had the courage to tell him the hard truth, of how difficult the journey would really be. But he was too far to turn back now, all he could do was move forward.

With leaden feet and a heavier heart, he trudged along, stumbling here and straying there. The road itself had become murky, sometimes disappearing for long stretches and emerging again from a different direction. He didn't realize that he had been drifting, walking in circles, till he kept ending up at the same place over and over. And he wasn't the only one, his fellow travellers were as weary as him, some choosing to hide the truth from themselves, others willing to end their journey at the nearest town.

The weather also turned a foe sometimes. Some days were mild, placid to the point of boredom, but there were nights he had to struggle to stay awake, fighting for survival against a torrential storm. He was so worn out that he felt numb, as much in mind as in body. Yet he kept moving, one step at a time. What little pleasures he could find along the road, he would savour. Any respite from the grind was like an oasis in the middle of a desert, he would make sure to enjoy it as much as he could. But he couldn't stay there forever, that was not where he belonged, and on he kept treading the road.

Slowly, and painfully, he had realized that the journey was as much about riches that lay ahead as the thorns that lined the way. It was as much about the pleasures that were found along the way as it was about the arduous climb. The wind-blown meadows, the stony slopes, the luscious riverbanks, the freezing mountain trails, the shady forests and the scorching deserts were all equally parts of the journey. He understood that happiness and sorrow were two sides of the same coin, one couldn't exist without the other.  He learnt that true love would always be accompanied by heartbreak, and that heartache would be followed by love. He began to accept that the grind of the journey was inseparable from its glory.

And along his road he met people of all ilk. There were storytellers and showboats, alchemists and artisans, the beautiful and the bold, the credible and the charlatans, the reserved and the raucous. There were the hypocrites, beckoning people to action, yet who refrained from action themselves. There were the drifters, staying aloof from everyone else. There were the curious, eager to learn and experiment, and there were the carefree, who left their direction to chance. And rarely, there were the enchanting, causing his heart to skip a beat when his eyes met theirs.  Most of these people, he would cross paths with once, and would never see again. But there were some that remained. Some who had to travel the same road as his, and some who wanted to travel the same road with him. They were the ones he held the closest. Even though he knew that they couldn't stay in his life forever, that their roads would diverge someday, he was sure that they would stay in his heart and among his most precious memories.

He was standing, still doubting the path he was about to tread, the ties he would have to sever, when the first rays of the sun broke the veil of night. The sky was painted a shade of purple first, then crimson, which slowly turned azure. Watching this, he was profoundly aware of how much he had changed. He was battered, bruised and scarred, tempered by the heat of the journey, and yet he was wiser and stronger than he was before. The things that broke him in the past were the very things that gave him strength, if only for the fact that he emerged from them alive. He knew that whatever the road had to throw at him he could take, or at least find a way to endure. He was ready for the road ahead, that he was sure of. And with that thought in mind, he took the first step of his new journey.

Tribute - An Ode in Blood

Note to the reader: This poem is a tribute to a recently concluded TV show, whose first few seasons were absolutely riveting. So if you haven't seen the show, just go along with it and let me know if you get the theme. If you have seen the show, kudos, you'll know what I'm talking about.

“Tonight’s the night”

The time is right

A shadow stalks

In the pale moonlight

With a syringe in hand

In an old brown shirt

He readies himself

For the kill, tonight

The target vetted

His habits learnt

His flaws, his demons

Out in the light

At a distance

The predator hides

Unnoticed by

The prey in sight

As sharp as a blade

His cold green eyes

Watching, waiting…

For a moment to strike

The kill-room prepped

From ceiling to floor

Adorned in plastic

For his rite

Photographs….

A moment of regret…

Then it’s time

For the bloody delight

A slash to the cheek

A drop of blood

To his box

Another slide

A case of knives

Patiently, they wait

For a stab to the heart

Then no more fight

Chopped and bagged

The dead man lies

To be thrown off-board

‘A Slice of Life’

Into the depths

Of the Miami sea

Out of mind

Out of sight

Killers, criminals

Evil-doers, murderers

If you fit Harry’s code

Run for your life!

Beware of him

Of his blade in the dark

His rope around your neck

At a moment’s notice, too tight

An angel of death

An artist with blood

Serving up

Some justice, Divine!

Yet his curse

His burden he must bear

The dark passenger

The monster in his mind

And doomed are the ones

Who he holds near

For who bathes his hands in blood,

Must pay in blood

That will be Dexter’s plight…