Sunday 16 September 2012

Biking and writing......

I was riding  the bike at a breakneck pace, without a helmet, sans the least care in the world, with only one thought – rebellion – directed against the whole world. 

The gusts of wind that buffeted my unprotected face, blinding me with their intensity, forcing me to squint and blowing away my hair backward, seemed to whistle in my ears in an eerie fashion.

The stretch of asphalt in front of me, robbed of some of its sun-baked hotness under the coolly overcast sky, went ahead, snake-like, peppered with gentle undulations that often tried to jolt me off the seat as I would never slow down.

I would attempt to ape the manoeuvres of super-bikers, making the bike lean to one side, my knee almost grazing the tarmac, then quickly straighten up again, only to lean towards the other side with the next sharp turn in the road.

In the frenzy induced by the drug of adventure, mounting a flyover seemed to be a conquest of the most Himalayan task in my life and as I achieved it, I took my hands off the handle-bars, beating the air with my fists, celebrating a facile victory.

Little did I know what awaited me as I descended – a speeding car that appeared out of nowhere, hit my bike broadside-on with such force that I was sent sailing over the kerb, landing in a heap amid a row of trees, finally waking up to write this piece with a week-full of pills and intravenous shots in my bloodstream that befuddled my brain but never doused my creative fire.

Sunday 26 August 2012

Love, lust and infatuation....

I wonder what it is that exists between me and her. On the one hand, I am pained to the core, burning with jealousy when I see her do so much as exchange pleasantries with another guy. On the other hand, I ignore her at will. 

Perhaps it feeds my ego to see her alone, unaccompanied and awaiting me. But for how long would she wait? She has her desires and I have mine. I keep them in check on the surface but inwardly I am consumed by the desire to possess her, to make wild, passionate love to her; love that is more carnal less emotional; love that applies a balm on the aching body. To satisfy these cravings I indulge myself with pictures of her - always of her; no girl even remotely manages to bring me anywhere near the climax of my sexual excitement than her.

Her body, her skin, her smell and the evocative photographs make me almost insane with desire; their gratification can only be effected with an act of masturbation that makes me let go of some of my thirst, makes me feel sane again. 

Yet whenever I see her in person, I continue to ignore her, not even answering her smiles, just looking away.

Perhaps I do not have the courage to attempt to re-join a bond that had been rudely snapped two years back, not as a result of any quarrel but simply an effort to save myself from her mocking comments, hurting me in front of everybody, not directly, but in a way that can hardly be called subtle.

Her face is not very pretty, her body is a bit plump but she is cute in a petite sort of way and there is something in her eyes, mesmerizing me, giving rise to those pangs of my inability to possess her.Very few people would call her beautiful. Still, I find the million pictures and videos of stark naked women in tantalizing poses, in various degrees of nudity, pouting lips, lissome legs, incredible bottoms and shapely breasts - all fading away when it comes to rousing the demon inside me, the libidinous beast who subsists on lust and its base realization.

Now I think it isn't really love. This thing is antithetical to the very concept of love. It is that lowly thing called infatuation, an inane feeling that deprives the mind of its ability to reason, allows lust to take over and reduces one human-being to an object and and another to an admirer who is no different than a window-shopper who suddenly becomes fixated on a particular bauble, which is gilt-edged on the outside but is probably even less worthy than the pedestal it is mounted on.

Love makes a better human being out of a man or woman but infatuation, especially one that occurs at a very young, unripe age, also has its advantages. The best thing is it ends soon. No matter how much pain, heart-burn and anguish it may engender, in the long run, it teaches a lesson that cannot be forgotten ever. In fact, infatuation could be a step towards making a person capable of true love.

When you realize the worthlessness of a bauble, it is likely that you would appreciate the value of a jewel much more.

Innocence, squeamishness and survival...

The sight of blood would make him sick even if it exuded from a minor cut or wound. It wasn't his squeamishness, rather a kind, loving nature that wished to see no one getting hurt. He could be masochistic enough to bear all the pain himself letting a fellow-being live a life of comfort.

The atavistic urge of self-preservation had never touched him. If he had been hit by a car, the first thing he would think of was the reason that led to the motorist's distraction resulting in the accident; perhaps the motorist had problems of his own or he was preoccupied and so on and so forth.

He could never accuse people. Whenever he met someone, his eyes searched for the goodness inside that man even if that minuscule thing was buried beneath layers and layers of malevolence, greed, hatred and deceit. Such people are at a premium and an endangered specie.

For such a man, survival in the brick-metal-concrete jungle of a city is no less difficult than the survival of a hapless deer amid a pride of lions in the real, unforgiving wilds.

I wonder what God was thinking when He decided to send such a creature to earth, an earth which has fallen to such depths that humanity is a vestige of what it was at the dawn of the earliest civilization. Mankind is probably reverting to that time when survival was the key, the centre of a man's existence and fellow-feeling existed in a form that is evinced by animals only.

Sunday 19 August 2012

Cynicism, grief, catharsis etc.....

I haven't had much happiness in life; what I had, I threw away.  

I am too cynical. This cynicism draws a veil over my better judgement up to an extent that I see everything with a jaundiced eye. A smile is like a sneer to me, friendly banter is sarcasm to me, an advice is a spillage of vitriol and a gesture of kindness is cold comfort.

The whole world seems to be against  me, baying for my blood, determined to pull me down; down to the very depths to which the vermin seem to belong.

Writing what I feel seems to be the best way of letting out the tension that seems to hold me in a vice-like grip, twisting and kneading, threatening to pull my vitals apart. The words I put down on paper are my sole attempt at catharsis; I don't know how to say these things to a fellow-being.

At this moment, the paper seems so animated, so close to life; my only companion with whom I communicate with the pen.This new-found friend seems so considerate, bearing all my rantings, never complaining, never being judgmental.

When tears are shed, they relieve the mind of its burden of grief but mine seem to be trapped in the eyes, welling up but never falling, choking my throat, weighing heavily on my soul, tormenting me till I beg to be let off.


The flight of Time....

Time just flies away and before you can blink you are on the verge of death, regretting so many things you could have done in so many different ways.

I have spent a considerable part of my life going through the motions, drifting with the tide, like a free fall in empty space when you don't see the bottom and have not a shadow of an idea as to what lies beneath.

I have realized quite late in the day that life is meant to be enjoyed to the fullest rather than being spent dabbling in shallow waters while the ocean lies unexplored.

I let so many opportunities pass by on my journey, just looking, never touching - a peripheral enjoyment that left me feeling unfulfilled and craving for more.

A retrospection always makes me regret what I left behind. 

The future lies wrapped in swathes of darkness and I can hardly find my way; I have lost my bearings; I am groping in the darkness that envelops my very existence.

All of a sudden, in this Stygian gloom appears a beacon of light, a ray of hope that seems to hold some promise of showing me the way out.

This glimmer of hope is the only thing I am left with, the only thing that reminds me that life is not meant to be frittered away, rather it is a discovery every other day and it depends on oneself whether one can make the most of it or just go through the motions of birth, living and death.

Epiphany....

The pain of loss of identity in a crowd may not mean much to the average guy but I have never wanted to be average in my life. The word average sounds so statistical, so very much like a lifeless figure on a graphical rendition of a collection of data; I am much more human than that.

I have spent precious years of my life trying to be someone I wasn't, trying to make a mark in a realm which is as similar to my talent as chalk is to cheese.

The occasional successes in my chosen vocation created an illusion that made me rejoice in my mistakes for I could never pin-point my true potential far less explore an avenue in that direction.

The best virtues are inculcated in the face of adversity and the biggest epiphanies occur when you fail at a moment when you were most sure of success.

I have realized now what I am cut out for, my place in the divine scheme of things, my raison d'etre; the path that was seemingly lost in a maze now stands out, clearer than it can ever be.

Childhood and maturity.....

There are things adults do that I wish I had never grown up. A child's mind is free of prejudice, malice and hatred which abound in a man. A child is not aware of religion, caste and gender disparities. 

I remember an incident where a six-year old boy in my building - who belonged to a rich household - would go and play with the children of a poor milkman who had a cow-shed nearby. It would never have crossed the boy's mind that a filthy cow-shed stinking of dung was not an appropriate playground or the children who wore tatters were not fit to be playmates.
When he grows up, his parents, peers, teachers and other people in his social circle would teach him the differences in status and class. When that happens, his white robe of childish innocence would be smudged by the stains of hubris, the angelic face that might have winced at the sight of injury to a fellow-being would be concealed by a mask of deliberate indifference and he would think of nothing but personal gain, satisfaction of his own desires by hook or by crook and would not think twice before trampling on the weak and indigent on his path towards success, the kind of success that is monetary and often comes at the price of one's humanity.

To a child, a girl's superiority will never register on the mind as a dent on his masculine ego; at the most it will be a momentary resentment that will be as temporal as a wisp of fog that is cleared away by the very first rays of the sun. 

A child is not bothered by the thoughts of personal advancement but lives in the present where an inexpensive toy is sufficient to humour him, so much in contrast with the insatiable appetite for luxury that is the raison d'etre of a man's existence.


Saturday 18 August 2012

Stagnation and growth.....

So many people around me with new degrees, new courses, new jobs and so on and so forth, and me a stagnating, almost inanimate object, trapped in the same job, same city for the past three and a half years ? No! I am not stagnating ! I am growing like a tree that remains fixed to the ground and yet keeps scaling new heights. 

The tree was a seed once, buried in the ground while time elapsed around it and then one day the seed started to sprout. The sapling took all the nourishment it could imbibe from its surroundings and kept on growing - leaves sprouting, flowers blooming, branches elongating and the trunk hardening with time.

Such is my own growth.

 I am absorbing as much as I can from the ambience, using it to my advantage, steeling myself with every injury, groping in the dark, fumbling with novelties, stumbling and then getting up every time, emerging a better man.

I learn something new everyday, brush up and update my knowledge, hone my God-given skills, and in the process I am being chiseled by Time, the greatest sculptor, into an object of perfection.

The battle of life will harden me into a being that would perhaps make a mark one day.

May be I would achieve greatness while being fixed in the same spot till eternity.

Thursday 16 August 2012

Against her will

The news-piece regarding the gang-rape of a seventeen-year old girl filled me with such revulsion as I had never felt before. The revolting thought of inhuman monsters who walk amongst us, feigning innocence, concealing their wicked, lascivious designs on every passing woman with a civilized veneer, always looking for the opportunity to force themselves on a defenseless fellow-being - a woman who must have been someone's sister or daughter- sent a shudder through my whole body as if I had just touched an abhorrent reptile.
 I tried to imagine how the rape must have taken place - faceless monsters defiling the body of a young woman, ripping the clothes off her, touching her in places that are forbidden to everyone but lovers and husbands; a stranger drooling over her, thrusting his organ into her, sliding in and out, while a man kept her mouth covered to stop her frenzied screams, another man holding her legs fastened to the ground as they flailed and tried to hit them with the little strength she had against her masculine violators. I wonder how she must have felt - Oh God! When is this nightmare going to end !Those creatures appearing to her as  figures silhouetted against the sunlight, blotting out the sun as if cutting off the last remaining rays of God's grace on this earth, leaving a planet that is desolate of humanity. 

For her remaining life, if she didn't end up as a vegetable living on tubes and syringes, she would be haunted by those figures that had reduced her to an object of lust, the basest instinct of men, which is so easily unleashed on weak, lonely women.

Saturday 11 August 2012

A killer's conscience....

With his one eye watching the movement of his quarry through the magnified vision of the telescopic sight - mounted on his heavy sniper-rifle - his mind was not as focused as a killer's should have been.

The would-be victim, a middle-aged man, who walked at a leisurely gait with a young daughter seemed to be a target too tame for an assassin of his caliber.

The man's caring hand on the girl's shoulder, her jolly facial expression and the innocent tranquility in the air formed an idyllic setting which he, a murderous spoilsport, was about to interrupt with a fatal  movement of his trigger-finger.

Remorse had never bothered him ever before but the present scenario had brought back some old memories that he had buried along with his humanity.

He was  a widower whose only daughter, of about the same age as the girl in question, had been brutally violated and dumped in a deserted street, already a corpse, to leave him alone, uncared-for and seething with a rage that was directed against whole mankind.

His mentor had realized his potential and had taught him to channelize and mould his rage to become an assassin par excellence ; an assassin whose fingers had now turned to butter as he watched the duo get inside the safety of their house, leaving him deprived of his murderous instinct but having gained a fragment of his long-lost humanity.

Blind combat.....

It is a fact that when one of the five senses is inhibited, the rest become stronger.

It was nowhere more apparent than in the case of our hero.

Having lost both eyes as a child, his mentor had taught him the art of 'blind combat'.

His ears could hear the rustle of an opponent's clothes, the sharp intake of his breath, his furtive footsteps and even the movement of his arms as they cut through the air.

His skin could feel the slight variation in wind-direction as it got past a man's body; the nape of his neck would tingle on sensing a quarry close behind; his nostrils could smell the bodily odour and even the impending threat.

His more tangible powers, strength and agility, did not pale in comparison; he could cut an adversary in half with a quick, blurred movement of his twin ninja swords that were in sync with his senses and as eager for combat as he was.

Friday 10 August 2012

Battle - won and lost......

The armies were ready to charge, not with guns, but swords, shields, spears and bows and arrows that were the hallmark of an ancient battle.

The stern, implacable looks on the visages of the two commanders, the restlessness of the horses and elephants, rearing to go, and the glint of the sun on armours across the ranks of the infantry, boded ill for heaven and earth which were about to witness a bloodshed of titanic proportions.

The conches sounded, the commanders shrieked and the armies advanced like a wavefront on still water that destroys the calm placidity in a ruthless manner.

The meeting of the two multitudes of humanity was like a bolt of lightening that strikes without remorse,  scorching everything in its aftermath.

The swords struck, the spears impaled, the animals trampled and the volley of arrows threatened to blot out the sunshine; blood spilled and flowed as if a mighty river had blown away the fetters of a dam ; the gods of war clenched their fists and spat their fiery venom.

It hardly mattered what side won; the mothers always lost.

Thursday 9 August 2012

Good and Evil......

There is a Hyde lurking inside every human.

You give him a chance and he lashes out at the drop of a hat, ripping apart the civilized veneer of good that keeps it hidden from sight.

Mine was at his malevolent best when I saw her on board a train.

Her lively prattle, her frequent attempts to adjust and re-adjust the locks of hair that blew helter-skelter with the wind and her doe-like eyes triggered an insane desire within me to hurt her.

Perhaps it was the unbearable realization of not being able to possess her that pandered to the evil inside me.

At that moment, I would have loved to shove her off the train without remorse, without a single guilty pang and Hyde would have celebrated his victory with a jig.

Wednesday 8 August 2012

Speed, youth and death....

Throwing all caution to the winds, he drove at a break-neck pace that threatened to take the wheels off the convertible.

The rushing gusts that blew his luxuriant hair backwards seemed to be divine speed-breakers meant to oppose his adolescent recklessness, almost whispering in his ears, " Slow down! Or you are doomed!"

The serpentine road grazing the mountain's periphery was replete with hair-pin bends and any manoeuvre along them would surely have intimidated any driver within the bounds of sanity but certainly not our guy.

One moment he would turn the steering clock-wise, the very next he would reverse it unceremoniously- the tyres screeching, the engine coughing and the exhaust pipe blowing out bursts of smoke that faded into the surrounding air, perhaps as a premonition that a life too was about to fade away into nothingness.

But he went ahead, unheeded, ignoring all the signs, all the pleadings.

When the car went down into the depths of the ravine, it wasn't an accident but a foregone conclusion that received the stamp of finality with the explosion that resounded against the walls of that natural cess-pit, snuffing out a life that must have been held dear by somebody.

Monday 6 August 2012

Cold metal....

Staring down the barrel of a gun is not the most pleasant of experiences.

In his case, it was outright horrifying.

The steely glint, the dark hue and the cold metal that heralded the uneasy prospect of impending doom, were enough to send him to such heights of fear as he had never known.

Shiny beads of sweat had appeared on his forehead, the sudden dryness of his throat was making him swallow very hard and he could feel every inch of his body screaming hoarse - " Run! Run like you have never run in your life!"

But he couldn't move, not with the gunman's finger on the trigger threatening to exert that little extra pressure that would fire the bullet straight through his heart.

He managed a wan smile, contemplating the irony of his being at the receiving-end of the kind of death that he had meted out to so many people.

Night of nights........

The stranger hadn't seemed willing at first. She made use of all feminine weapons in her armoury to grab his attention , after all , the day had been entirely 'dry' and a little earning will make it worthwhile.

But the 'act' wasn't perfunctory at all.

Instead, it was an eruption of such intensity that carnal passion flowed uncapped, unbridled and with such abandon as her body had never experienced in her life-time in the oldest profession.

The man's superficial coldness was heavily at odds with his latent sensuality which asserted itself in the multitude of sensations which rocked her whole being to the core.

An expected brief chapter in disinterested , mechanically-performed coitus had been replaced with an act of 'love-making' in the true sense of the word and was as gratifying to her as if she had just got past a mid-life crisis.

Sunday 5 August 2012

Edge of the precipice.....

The thrill of adventure had led to his plight. His better sense had warned him against going too close to the edge of the precipice but his child-like adventurism had suggested otherwise.

Here he was now - dangling from a rock  jutting out from the cliff-face , the sheer separation between him and the seemingly bottomless chasm.

His hands were straining to get the maximum purchase they could on the surface of the bare rock, his legs flailed like the detached appendage of a reptile and his heart thudded against his chest like an ominous clock chiming away the last remaining moments of life in this world.

A cry for help would have been as fruitless as the prospect of water in a limitless expanse of desert.

He tried not to look down into the gaping void beneath him that seemed so alive now, readying itself like a mythical creature to swallow him whole, mocking at his desperate attempts to pull himself back over the edge.

Writer's block and inner demons.......

My head is bursting with new ideas but its hard to put them down on paper. I don't know what stops me. Is it the fear of not being able to produce anything readable ? Or is it just the lack of energy, the kind of lackadaisical lethargy that is the bane of creativity...? I wish I knew.

When I read my favourite writer, his ability to narrate, to juggle with words, holds me in awe. His skilll makes me feel hollow with the knowledge that I lack something to produce anything half as good. 

 The demons haunt me all the time, the boob-tube is a time-killler and my malingering  imagination achieves a Pyrrhic victory over my better sense that always advises me to get up and write.

I must exorcise these inner demons if I have to achieve anything. I must win this battle with my own mind. I must give my thoughts wings that don't flap just for the sake of it but take me on a vicarious journey to a world where I can find my Muse.

I must write.

Saturday 4 August 2012

Emptiness of living - there is still hope....

It was the only thing I had been living for. An aim whose realization I had dreamed about for the better part of last one year.

And now when I was just about to mount the second rung of the ladder, I seem to have been violently hauled off the very first rung.

I had never imagined  that all my hard work,  the painful hours I spent trying to read things which would be called 'dry' by anyone but the perseverant, the million times I told myself that my 'self-inflicted agony' would be richly rewarded , the physical and mental exhaustion I went through, would all be in vain.

My days had been so full of my single-minded,toilsome study, that the sudden cessation of it has left me vacant like a meadow that has been robbed of its verdure; a tree whose leaves have fallen off; a flower that has been deprived of its aroma; a mother who has lost her beloved son.

But there is always Hope. So I have been told time and again like a clock that keeps chiming the same tone.

This emptiness could perhaps be filled up. Every man with a life worth living has a hobby. Mine is my love for words. This love is the only thing left with me; the only thing no one can take away.

May be , I can still live.

Success and vitriol


I fail to understand why people want to see others going down. May be it is a sense of malicious pleasure that another man failed at an attempt that they themselves never had the courage to even think about. What vestigial remnants of human beings are these people ? They do not realize that their ill-will and the physical manifestations of it, the sneers, the jibes and the heart-burn seem to be more of a celebration of their own impotence than a way to dent the confidence of a brave man who had the determination to do what these people would never be able to attempt in a thousand lifetimes. Sometimes I think it is a way of God to test the endurance of a man that He perhaps chose to accomplish a great task just to see that He had chosen wisely. Men of true-grit and integrity are at a premium and the world needs them much more than the dregs of human-kind that are only good at vilifying others.

Thursday 2 August 2012

A face can say a lot....

With a week-old stubble, the face was not exactly the material version of the proverbial modern , metrosexual men's images that thrive on the pages of glossy women's magazines but in terms of rugged ,masculine handsomeness, it was a winner all the way. The eyes were deep-set, more like narrow slits that stared out from beneath dark eyebrows giving him the look of a keen, incisive man, difficult to ignore and making it an act of outright daring to look him in the eye. The eyes were crowned by a broad temple that rhymed with a chiselled nose, a stiff upper lip and a chin that narrowed downwards in keeping with the Grecian features.He had brushed his hair back thus revealing his forehead and giving him a cruel, no-nonsense look.The fullness of his luscious lips presented a stark contrast with the rest of his face and could have been a deliberate attempt by Providence to make him less baleful and more agreeable. The curling away of the lips would reveal a set of perfect, white teeth that signified not only symmetry but strength as well .Here was a man with all the weapons in his arsenal to slay a woman's heart. A man who could get things done peremptorily and with finality.

Red-light encounter

A story in six sentences :
 It was a three-minute red-light.I had stopped there and was just looking around to bide my time when I saw her. Dressed up in a blue flimsy top and a white skirt, her impatient gaze focused on the green light, her hand ready to turn the throttle of the scooter, her cherubic face tinged with tiny beads of perspiration that threatened to coalesce and flow down the slope of her fair neck and reach her sculpted shoulders, she had the kind of beauty that made my heart skip many a beat. The light had still not turned green, thankfully, and with a frustrated shaking of the head, she shifted her gaze to where I was. Five feet and five inches of sensuality was alloyed by the innocence in her eyes which mesmerized me and robbed me of all locomotion. She gave a little semblance of a smile, scarcely aware that she had made my day even if for just three minutes.

The mole on her neck....

Here is a little rendition of a story in SIX  sentences : 

It was the mole that he noticed first. A tiny, black spot just about midway down the sweet separation between her chin and her left collar-bone that passed for a neck. It was so much at odds with the rest of her fair skin like a speck on  freshly-cleaned white fabric, the obvious difference being that the former was so desirable. Whether it was his fetish or some undefined force of attraction exuding from the mole is hard to say but he lay transfixed on it forgetting even to blink for a few seconds. Smack! The spell seemed to have broken unceremoniously with she having found him staring at herself ( or her mole rather). He was so rattled as if he had been caught in the midst of his indulgence in a forbidden pleasure and looked guiltily away.