Monday 28 November 2016

ले देख तमाशा!

सुन रे सुन बेलिया
दिल ने धोखा दिया 
आँखें मिली तुमसे नाज़नी 
मेरे होश-ओ-हवास खो गए 

Have you ever felt that your heart cheats on you? Have you known that your heart is fickle? Are you aware that you've never really loved someone truly? What do you do when you know? Do you stop loving? 

You don't.

You search for faces. You search for faces to confide in. You search because you want to hide from the world the frailties that are a part of your being. You want to acquire power; power over someone else's being, their face, their pain, and their flesh. 

So you make a decision. You decide to fall. You fall from your own self-built castle of impunity and land into a pit you call love. Love, for all those who have felt it, is nothing more than an intoxication. It's just that the meaning of intoxication is subjective.

दिल ने रो रो कहा
ये आँखें हैं दिल की ज़ुबान
ख्वाब रोज़ रोज़ देखे नए।

You fall from impunity and land on a minefield. You look skywards towards the castle. You look towards the doors you'd barged through and you look at the mess that remains. 

And then, you look at yourself. You know that the mess up there is repairable. The mess down here- in your gut - isn't. You know  that there's no stairway to take you back there. And there's no highway down here either.

So you dream. You dream to find a grain of wheat to separate from the chaff. You dream of finding a silver lining, knowing very well that there's no cloud to find it in. But you dream, because you are a prisoner of your heart.

हो दिल का भंवर बोले सुन साथिया
छुप ना दुपट्टे में तू ओ छलिया 
प्रेम पुजारी के 

दिल का बयां 
होता रहा, 

रोता रहा प्रिये...

There are rules of the prison, though. Prisoners aren't allowed to die in peace. Death is a tricky taker. It takes those who love life the most. Death was cheated by its heart too. But for someone who walks down a minefield, life is only that valuable. So you tread. 

You get hurt, you get bombed, but you tread. You tread until your feet hurt and then tread some more. You meet other travellers. You crib to them about how you were tricked. You cry holding one of them hoping that they'd send you back. But they don't. Because they cannot. 

And that's how the world's been turning. We've all fallen into the pit we never knew existed. And we're too scared to end it all. So we walk. We walk down the boulevard, not just of broken dreams, but of broken hearts; or should I say, broken beings, tricked by the heart. 

In the midst of the chaos, you find stories similar to yours. You find scars and wounds that match the ones on your body. Once you find them, you hold on to them. You hold on to them until you realize that even they can't send you back. So you let go, and search for another one or two. You search for another face. You search for another story.

The heart tricks you again. But you couldn't care less. Because you know that all of life is a Tamasha, and we're here to build our stories. Only so that we can tell them.


Sunday 7 February 2016

The Bench

The bench lies empty now. It was occupied once, for a brief moment, though. That brief moment was an eternity. That brief moment was the last time I'd held her hand, with the facade that I had put on to hide what lay within, but without her knowing it.

Winter hadn't arrived yet. It was autumn slowly submitting itself to the coldness that lay ahead. Leaves were scattered helter-skelter and the rest were dripping down like incandescent rain pelting down on rough stones.

Dark brown ones- the leaves- dark, perhaps because they'd burnt for so long, and were just waiting to let go. A few of them fell at our feet, and I chose not to tread on them. For a few had also occupied the bench before we reached there, and I'd seen how mercilessly she'd used her purple scarf to nonchalantly brush them away.

I was scared of this gesture, for I knew, that very soon, I would let go too. I would let go of the mask that I couldn't fathom when I'd put on. A mask that would give me away, a mask that would be the folly to the bond I had built over seasons- over Novembers, over years.

I knew that I'd fall down too when that happens, like the leaf- burnt, consumed, wasted. Except that I was human; except that I would live on, I'd have to live on.

The evening was breezy, perfect for the hair she hardly bothered trying. She'd loved to be free, just like they were- kissing the wind as it passed by, but never holding on to it.



She'd dressed up too, and I chose to believe that it was for me. I smiled at her as she appeared from the gate. She smiled back, her lips glittering with something I couldn't immediately comprehend. I wanted to tease her, but the chivalry didn't come. I'd had enough of it.

The lips were smiling, the eyes weren't, as she landed on the bench with a gentle thud, too gentle to be noticed, too heavy to be ignored. She'd been weathering a storm herself, without having the slightest of ideas that another one was coming.

Our hands and our bodies were at whiskers, but they just had to be there, like they had been, forever. Except that I wanted to bridge the gap, wanted to mingle into those gaps and dissolve them.

I couldn't. So I chose to look at her, like I had done on each of the few evenings that I had the fate to spend with her. The golden locket adorning her neck stood out against her skin, and lunged into her neckline before disappearing into her bosom.

She wasn't breathing well. I could make that out from the way she looked into nothingness. I wanted to do something about it, like I always had, but couldn't.

The hourglass was only getting empty, and I tried to blabber and murmur- as much as I could, like I always had, with the woman being my witness- before my words dry up, and silence engulfs.

A child drew her attention, and her broadened lips drew mine. But they closed, soon. For some reason, I'd found the closed ones sexier. They were like those thick broad petals of bougainvillea, except a little less pink.

But now I wanted to kiss them, like I'd wanted to kiss on her moles, her neck, and everywhere else. I did all of it, albeit with a touch, when I placed my palm over hers- only for a second- to feel the coldness she couldn't express.

The bench had gone warm, perhaps the warmest it had felt for a long long time, and I, for those brief moments of eternity, felt the same.

The warmth, the heat, the fire, was brimming out, and I knew that I couldn't hold on for long. So I asked her to get up, and we left.

The heat soon withered, and the bench was left cold. Autumn resisted vehemently, but winter, my heart had realised by then, is an inevitability.


  

Saturday 23 January 2016

"Severus, please?"

"Severus..." mumbled a pensive Dumbledore, his eyes transfixed on the bravest sepoy he'd raised, as Draco Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange looked on.

Severus didn't move. He didn't even blink an eye. He just watched and watched the old man, under whose commands, he'd lived much of his life for the past seventeen years.

"Please," the headmaster sounded more helpless this time, like the autumn leaf about to get detached from the tree it had survived on, ready to hit the ground, ready to let go.

Severus stared for a second more, perhaps to bait his heart into the delusion of sanity, to pip his tears with remorse, his love with hatred.

The last he'd cried was seventeen years back, holding a dead woman in his arms, with her baby wailing at a loss it couldn't even comprehend.

A sepoy isn't supposed to have any feelings, and he'd fooled everyone except a beating piece of flesh that had survived on a Patronus more than blood.

"Avada Kedavra!"

He didn't take a second longer to flash his wand than he'd taken to rip apart his conscience, and the bravest man Hogwarts ever had was now a Death Eater.

Death had failed to surprise him any longer, for he'd seen many. It was his life that did.

For seventeen years he had lived for a reason he couldn't quite understand. He was the man who died every day for the boy who lived.

The day he died for the umpteenth time, albeit never to rise again, it was the boy who looked on, not wailing this time, but yet again unable to comprehend the loss he was staring at.

Severus cried for the first time in seventeen years, but it wasn't for death. It was for a pair of eyes he was leaving behind.

The eyes he couldn't look into and protect any longer. The eyes he'd already lost once, and would do anything to save that from recurring. 

The eyes of a Lily.

Like in his life, he was cheated in his death too. Why did he live on then? Why did he wait for so long?

It was to answer a rhetoric he was asked every day, "Severus, please?"




This is a tribute to the departed soul of Alan Rickman, who portrayed the role of Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series.
It is a character I hold very dear and seek closure from.

Rest in peace, Severus. You'd live on, in here. 

Always!

Sunday 3 January 2016

I lost my heart in Connaught Place

I lost my heart in Connaught Place
It lost itself in the din
It swirled around through my broody face
And got hungover at N-81.

At every nook, at every alley,
It saw a silhouette recede,
It fluttered over helter-skelter,
Only to confirm its imagery.

The pillars- all white
The roads- all dark
The skies spilled Goldust
And the silhouette was lost.

It looked beyond the faces,
It looked beyond the walls
It looked inside the coffee shop
But the silhouette was lost.

It searched the subway
Hoards of souls
Looked for the taller ones
But found it no more.

The onlookers gazed
With contempt and dismay
My poor heart though resembled the dog
Who just refused to sway.

Long strands of hair were everywhere
But the smell was not to be found
The nectar it had drunk first
In the summer of 2009.

Strands gave way to scarfs
Purple ones with white stars
Necks were scanned, so were backs
But none as colossal were found.

Moles on the faces were plenty
Twins though were scanty
Hardly did it ever miss
Didn't find the ones it'd longed to kiss.

My heart was frantic
Tired and erratic
For it had swept the circus
Through summers and winters.

Through autumns and springs
Through souls- living and dead
Through concrete- erect and broken
Through local markets
Through confectionery stalls

Through the earth and the heavens
It searched and searched
To have glimpse of the hurricane
It had seen before it breathed last.

On a fidgety winter morning
My heart was like a phoenix
It burnt itself through the day
But didn't rise ever since.

Its ghost runs through the realms
Hidden behind my broody face
It was a cold November evening
When I lost my heart in Connaught Place.


Photo courtesy- shades-n-hues