Silence

Silence cannot be bought. We think it can, but the price is never high enough. Think about it, how much money would it take for you to keep something inside; something that eats away at your soul a little bit every day? How much would be enough to let yourself be torn asunder by some words which, if said out loud, would save you from going, very slowly, insane?

Silence is a bad thing. It cuts deeper, sometimes even wounds mortally. And sometimes it seeps into your soul, creeps into the corners you had learnt to hide from even yourself. And when that happens, when the silence has replaced everything inside you, you learn to fear words, to fear conversation. Your mind loses its readiness to engage in debate, loses the will to utter even the most of sounds.

Because there are no more words left to you. All the cracks and creases that let the words fall through have been filled by silence. Where there was passion, there is now only complacency. Where there was pain, there is now only acceptance. Where there was love, there is now only a void, a non-existence.

This complacency, this acceptance is what makes life mild, makes it all vanilla. Avoid complacency. Don’t accept. Fight, goddamnit! Fight until there is no breath in you, until your knuckles are bloody and teeth are missing. Fight until you can’t feel the pain anymore. Fight until either you get knocked down or the other gets knocked out. Shout out loud all that they would buy your silence for. Tell the world all about the horrors and the joys. But do not be silent. Do not be complacent. Do. Not. Accept.

Split Second

Sometimes when I’m sitting in front of the TV,
when I’m entering the house after a tiring day,
when I’m sitting quietly in my own room,
I catch a note from a song,
I catch a whiff of a perfume,
I catch a glimpse of a shadow on the wall.

And for a split second,
I’m taken back,
To Wednesday dinners,
To Monday afternoons,
To Friday goodbyes.

And in that split second,
I have you back,
Standing in the kitchen,
Working on the Wednesday dinner.

And I reach out to you.

But then the split second is gone,
And you’re gone again,
And I sit back, waiting for the next time,
I catch a note from a song,
I catch a whiff of a perfume,
I catch a glimpse of a shadow on the wall.

I sit back and wait for the next split second,
That will bring you back to me.

She.

(Short Story)

She was stuck.

She didn’t remember anything.

She couldn’t see anything.

She had called for help, shouted for help, but was met only by a deafening silence.

She was afraid to stand up, but when she did she was stable. She was afraid to take a step, but when she took it and a second and a third she was on solid ground. She was afraid to reach out, but when she did her fingers brushed against smooth rock.

She could hear her heart beating; hear the sound of her breathing.

She would have stayed on the ground but the darkness around her had started to creep into her soul. She pressed a hand against the rock wall and started walking. She moved her hand forward first and then took a step. She counted five steps when there was no more rock beneath her hand. She turned into it the opening and put both hands out only to find that she was in a tunnel – two feet wide, arched, five and half feet tall. She kept her hands on the walls to either side and started moving forward again. She lost count this time around and had to stop three times to rest.

She was hungry now. She could feel a headache coming on.

She started walking again after the third rest stop. She walked another fifty feet and bumped a door. She felt around it, found a knob. She was about to turn it when she felt like she heard a whisper. She was so used to the silence that even that slight whisper made the hair at the back of her neck stand up.

She could feel the panic coming back. She took two steps back, a step forward, and another step back. She couldn’t decide. She could stay in the dark; go back the way she came, find another tunnel, maybe even a way out or she could open the door and see who owned that hushed whisper.

She took a step forward and turned the knob, and then turned it again, and again – but nothing happened. She didn’t know what was worse – the fear of the dark or the fear of the whisper which was growing closer on the other side of that wooden barrier.

She heard noises now, like nails scratching wood. She tried to calm herself. She counted till ten in her head and by the time she was done, the scratching had stopped and the door was slightly open. She could see a trickle of light coming through the slit; there were candles on the other side, but not too many. She pushed the door open, but it wouldn’t budge. She had to put her back into it, only then did it sway just a little to widen the gap so she could slip in.

She wished she hadn’t. She wished for the dark again, for the door to have never opened.

She counted them, five, hanging from rope from a beam in the ceiling. She remembered nothing, but she remembered them now. She could see her Dad still wearing his horn-rimmed reading glasses, her Mom still wearing her ”#1 Mom” apron, her brothers both had their hands glued onto PlayStation joysticks, and her sister was wearing red lipstick. She could see their bulging eyes and their swollen faces.

She heard the whisper again then, right behind her. She could not turn, would not look.

She could feel the whispers bouncing off her body, the voice was moving around her until it was in front of her – SHE was in front of her. She was her, a mirror image in 3D. She could see the mole on the wrong cheek, and the hair parted on the wrong side. She could feel it now, how wrong it all was, the other her had killed them all. She lunged at her, but before she could get a grip she was falling, faster and faster, the dark closing in on her again.

She woke up, covered in sweat, in her own bed. She ran downstairs and there they all were; her Dad wearing his horn-rimmed reading glasses sitting at the kitchen table reading, her Mom wearing her ”#1 Mom” apron fixing dinner, her brothers in the den playing on their PlayStation, and her sister wearing the red lipstick about to walk out the front door. She saw them all turn to her, ask her what was wrong. She tried answering but her throat was dry. She sat down, across the table from her Dad, sipping from the glass her Mom had handed her. She was beginning to calm down but something changed; her Dad’s face started swelling up and turning blue, her Mom’s eyes popped out, her brother went limp on the couch, and her sister screamed for her life.

She woke up again, in a different place this time and then again in a different place.

She was stuck.

“So when do we wake this one up?”

The nurse didn’t feel sorry for the little girl, but was scared of her. The eyes had been just as glassy before putting her into the coma, just like a murderer’s.

“Fifty years to go for that one,” replied the doctor.

Well, that’s what you get for killing your whole family in cold blood. It was not her job to judge the people who came to her. They had all already been judged. Her job was to make sure they stayed under and the loop kept playing – showing them their crime, again and again until their time was done. Not many survived, and those who did – their brains refused to let them come out of the loop. They got stuck. Just like that poor girl would be. For eternity.

Monologue [Survive]

There’s always laughter to be had, also to be dealt. But what do you do when there is no longer any laughter left in your soul? I was not made to be bound to one place, one emotion. Maybe to one person, but even that is not apparent at the moment. I was made to travel, to walk on air. But what do you do when you can’t find the key to the shackles around your ankles? I was made to love, maybe to be love also – but that’s a matter for another time, another moment of rambling honesty. I was made to close my eyes, blind myself to the world and to walk the path that my heart saw. But what do you do when your heart can’t find its bearings either?

What do you do when you’re standing in the middle of nowhere, without a compass, without a friendly face, without a clue and without a soul? What do you do when you’re whole life turns upside down and still nothing good comes into view?

You push on. You close your eyes, spin on your toes and start walking in whatever direction you find. You keep walking until your feet bleed and your heart aches. And you keep walking until you see the finish line, until you see the prize. You don’t cry, you don’t break down – that is not allowed. You stay strong, you prove people wrong. You become the foundation and the legend built on top of it. You tap into the hollows left by your soul and find the crumbling pieces of your sanity and glue them together to make hope. You persevere. And you live, even if that is a life lived on the fringes, on the edges of reality.

And you survive – until that is all you know how to do.

12 a.m.

At 12 a.m., when my mind is swimming with a thousand regrets,
And I can’t stop the tears from falling,
That’s when I wish for you, from the bottom of my heart,
For you to whisper, “All is forgiven, darling.”

I Am A Romantic.

I’m a romantic. I have a thing for the ideal. I know that in most cases it is unattainable, and that all the hours I spend fantasizing about it might be considered as wasted. But that doesn’t stop me from daydreaming about perfect days and perfect people – a perfect life. I dream about spending my summers in a cabin in the woods, sipping coffee and reading Keats or Neruda. I dream of walking barefoot on the beach, watching the sun set in a beautiful blaze of color. I dream of backpacking through a world where I don’t have to be afraid, where the strangers smile back at me. I dream of nights spent under a canopy of stars, with Sinatra softly singing me to sleep. I dream of a cup of coffee that becomes the plot of my love story. I dream of a life filled with beauty; of men who look like Greek gods and women who are divas drunk on grace. But most of all I dream of myself – a “me” that has achieved all the good that is possible in a lifetime, a “me” that has manifested in itself all good things and shrugged off all the bad, a “me” that has become desirable, loveable, inspirational. I dream of a “me” that is the most unattainable of unattainable ideals. But that is what romantics do, we see the world not as it is, but as what we think Heaven might be – because we don’t live for this world, we live for Heaven. And we may be sinners, the lot of us. But, contrary to popular belief, romance, in pure essence, isn’t sin; it is the basis of faith. God gave me an imagination so that I could see Heaven in all the unattainable ideals. God made me to be a romantic, to write of love, and passion and the desire for all things brilliant. God made me to love. And so I am a romantic who dreams away her days and waits for a spark to start the flame and light up my ideal in a beautiful, glorious blaze of color. My ideals define me – I am a romantic, because I dream.

Two Questions

I had to go through mock interviews a couple days back as part of a mandatory exercise for all graduating students. As part of the last minute information-swap that students do, we were all asking each other a bunch of questions that are generic to interviews. Two questions stood out for me & I couldn’t think of a concrete answer.

1. Define yourself.
Now this is a tricky question. I can ramble on and on about myself to people who couldn’t be less concerned but when it actually counts, I’m at a loss of words. And I think this happened to everyone. I thought about it before the interview and the only things I came up with are the general terms that everyone uses; confident, problem-solver, team-player, people person.
But who am I really? I sat down to think about it and all the things that I came up with were nothing that the interviewers wanted to hear, because they are totally unrelated to my degree program or the IT industry in general.
So, who am I?

•  I’m a reader. I can’t live without books. 95% of the time I can’t even step out of the house without a book tucked into my bag, my one defense against loneliness. The book is the one companion that won’t leave me or won’t stand me up.
• I’m a writer. I love the feeling of pen/pencil between my fingers. It is the one kind of innovation that I’m moderately good at. I can put my thoughts into words and then put those words out into the world. And that is more than most people can manage.
• I’m an “imaginer”. I have always had a wild imagination. I might have never gone on an actual hike, but in my mind I’ve travestied across dense African jungles and frozen landscapes.
• I’m a believer. I believe in things – some true, some merely rumor and some wild ramblings of a half-mad mind. It is incredibly easy to fool me into believing something – especially when that ‘something’ revolves around the people I fancy. And I believe in the impossible, the improbable, because my faith tell me that my God is bigger than any impossibility.
• I’m a child-of-the-universe. Aren’t we all? I’m a student of the human condition. I try to understand what drives people to action, and what dulls them down to do nothing. I try to understand how each event carries so much weight that we have a whole phenomenon to define this.

2. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Honestly, how do you answer that question? For me, the answer changes every 6 months. People might call my confused, and I’m pretty sure I fit the general description. But I’m not confused, I’m just dynamic. My mind is filled with so many possibilities; I don’t know which one to wholly pursue. And for a person who says they don’t put much stock in what people say, I get deeply upset when someone tells me I can’t achieve something. Half of me wants to prove them wrong but the other half just wants to forget everything and move onto the next ‘big’ thing.
When I was in high school, I wanted to open my own software house. I had the name picked out and a design that would pass for a logo. Then I wanted to start writing my own column for a newspaper. Then I wanted to start my own e-magazine. Lately, I’m thinking I should open my own café/bakery.
But where I really see myself in 5 years is in some exotic location, carrying out the grandest of adventures – A World Tour. I still haven’t worked out where the money for such an endeavor would come from, but I don’t think I should stifle my imagination with such trivialities right now.

These two questions baffled me ever since a fellow asked me before the interviews began. I couldn’t answer them at the time because I kept thinking I should find an answer that would please the people around me, and I wasn’t really thinking about being truly honest with myself. I came up with these answers right now within seconds. And I had to write them down, because I feel the next time someone asks, I should answer properly. It might be the answer they’re looking for, and it might not satisfy them. But at least I’ll know I was honest with myself.

Rescue Me.

What is the meaning of this plasticity? Why are we surrounded by such mockery of the truth? Where are the friends who would not leave and lovers who would not sway? Where are the moments of glory and the passion for honor? Where are the morals? Where is the sincerity of purpose?

Where is the love for beauty? Where is the love for words? Where is the passion for language? Where is the lust for adventure?

Rescue me from this insincere world. Rescue me from all these people who would make a mockery of my sincerity. Rescue me from the faithless who point and whisper, “God shall never forgive you, sinner!”

Rescue me from this plasticity, this façade, this folly. Take me instead to winter’s end, take me to where the Sun shines shamelessly on a river of gold, & where monotony doesn’t tire the soul. Take me instead to where friends are loyal, lovers passionate and God forgiving.

Take me, instead, to truth.

Home.

Home. That’s where I want to be. A place where I’m not ridiculed or demeaned; a place where what I say is heard and what I do is seen.
Home; a place where my heart is, where my soul is at peace.
But what is home? Out of all the millions of definitions that each one of us would give it, which one sticks as universal? What is this place where we all want to be, this place that we’re all searching for but can’t seem to find? Is it a place, a feeling, or a purpose maybe? Maybe it’s just a thought, an illusion that we’ve conjured up, a motivational tool for when the going gets too tough.
Does “home” even exist in this plane, in this universe? Maybe it is somewhere beyond; beyond reach, beyond imagination but never beyond hope.

Home is where I want to be right now; at peace with myself, at peace without.
Home is where I want to be.