Same road, same precincts, same turns, same aspirations, same heartbreaks..
A different me?
Hardly!!

The Door Is Shut

The door is shut
The bars are raised
The lips clamped tight
The eyes are dry

A lightning scoured the desert sky
A splash of water sizzled in the sand
It happened, its over
Let it just be a silent saga
A chronicle of things unsaid

Ask me not any questions
For answers are of no use
Don't even hold my memories
Just let them wither away

Let my foolish footprints wander
Then get lost on your shore
Don't worry, soon enough
The tide will take them far

Monster

Ever so often you come face to face with the monster in you.

This can't be me! You say incredulously as you see in the mirror of your soul and a leering, hungry, jealous, ruthless, obsessive demon grins back at you.

You are shocked! Your first reaction? You want to deny it exists. You want to run away and be that nice person you thought you were. You just want to be warm and loving to the persons you care so much about. But when that monster takes over, you are not you anymore! It makes you trample everything you held dear - the tenderness, the principles and also the fragile, beautiful corners of life where you raised the spring garden.

What is worst, as much as you try to hide it, what you are is way more obvious to those around you. Those who love you enough and know you well, hang around patiently, faithfully. They know this is not who you are, and that one day you will be back to your real self. The others reject you. Leave you. Call you a bitch. Suddenly, everything around you takes on the edge of a sword. Everything shines bright but scathes you all the same.

Then begin the beatings. First, as the demon, you beat yourself for not getting what you wanted. The demon urges you to fall to the depths, to grab, to steal, to manipulate, to force your way into getting it at any cost. Suddenly, you find yourself dancing a murderous dance of greed. The ruins around you increase in number as everything crushes under your terrible feet.

Then comes the next stage as you awaken to the truth. As you begin to balance the books of your life, what you lost in the process starts becoming more and more obvious. The ruined castles of dreams cry out loud, gaping into the empty sky. Exhausted from your dance, you suddenly see that all that you wanted you have got, but it is coated in the miasma of avarice. You realize, this is not how you wanted it at all! The misery of those you hurt begins to bite you. The noose of failures tightens to chafe and you begin beating yourself for letting the demon take you over one more time.

But what you lost is gone, and you realize with a sinking feeling it will never come back. What you held tight in your fist has withered away. It was never yours anyway. All you are left with are the abandoned dreams of what could have been and the chronicles of the demon who made them fall through the cracks.

But there is something else. Something fragile, but beautiful. There is a little hope, a lesson learned, an opening of the heart. A little more growing up has happened even as you wallowed in self pity. A part of you has surrendered, softened and learned to love unconditionally. The mighty iceberg has melted just a little bit and a tremendous strength has developed somewhere deep within.

In the end, you know that some day, the monster will come back again. But, now, you also know that nine times in ten, you will be able to fight it back!

There is a new post on Polioman.

Its not too frequently that one comes across some people and is completely awed by their indefatigable spirit. I am blessed to have made such a friend recently.

Here's to your courage, Pankaj
Congratulations on completing 10 years of your new life! Hope the Sweetness and Light lasts forever :-)..

Maiden of Ash

I know you will come
When the stars in my eyes
Would have been snuffed
Asking me for some light

I will ask you then
Why did you not come
When I used to light lamps
Along your way

Then I will turn away
Unfeeling, heartless
Leaving you alone
In your darkness

You will cry then
You will tug at my hand
You will beg for some mercy
You will hold me tight

But in your embrace
I will wither away
Like a Maiden of Ash
Lifeless and wistful

Then at your feet
Would be the embers
Of my burning desires
Now turned cold

The Grownup Child

I haven't written in a while. Its been so long since I felt something so strongly that made words just gush out of me, just as they do whenever I write.

No, I don't give myself any credit for my writing. I have never been able to write just for the sake of writing. It has never been a conscious decision or a well thought-out strategy. Every word that has sprung to life in my poems or stories has originated somewhere deep down and resonated through the layers of my being before being put down and structured as a verse or a paragraph. If it did not happen like this, I have not been able to write at all!

Past few days have been manic. It is as if this body and mind was taken over by another Arundhati - an overly ambitions professional who is constantly on the tenterhooks of the desire for achieving something, longing to cry out in triumph, yearning to prove herself to someone. That Arundhati has been busy devising strategies and calculating her next moves. She has been weighing her future and visiting and revisiting her paycheck. She has been busy convincing, impersonating, demanding what she thought she deserved. Yes she won. She got what she wanted. She proved she was smart and she basked in the glory of jealousy and admiration from those around her.

However, even during these moments of triumph, I was there, unaffected, watching myself detachedly. This part of me - the quintessential witness - knew that desire begets happiness for a moment, but a yearning forever. There is no end to wants, no leash on expectations.

Its been so long I have been trying to live two lives - one for the world, one for myself. Many a times, these two parts of me have stood against each other. But so far, the world has won. The triumph of that other part lies in the fact that it has not given up. It still continues to exist within me in all its splendor and all its innocence.

Someday I hope to reconcile myself. I wonder how I will look. Ugly or beautiful? Stupid or soulful? Does the idea of a grownup child appeal to you? :-)