That night, by the wooden gate!

I was looking into the darkness spread in-front. The glitter of drops slithering intermittently from nowhere, plopping in to numerous puddles in the sandy earth below. The drops shone in the fading light coming from a distant lonely bulb, hanging on a forlorn electric pole,that was shrouded with enmeshed wires, and darkened by the years of neglect and loneliness. Some drop fell on the thatch on the roof too, through which they moved on to the edge of the straw, held itself at its edge and then ran free to the moist earth below. The night was dark, darker than usual, for the moon had been hiding behind the clouds that spread out  over the horizon. A faint music blared in the background, that of tabla, jhun - jhnuna , and together with it flowed an equally faint hum. Yet, I could listen to it clearly, almost as if they were being played by my side.

Reclining  on my left shoulder, on the left pane of the dilapidated door of the rickety passage of the village temple, I could see people hurrying themselves in and out of the main gate. Struggling with their umbrellas they could barely avoid themselves from getting wet, but I guess they did not mind rain actually, and acted to protect themselves only out of formality of being civilized.

Intermittently, some speeding car or state transport buses would pass by, honking menacingly and blinding with their glaring headlights. There was enough commotion around me, yet everything appeared to move drawly , as if the purpose of movement has been lost on all of them.

I was still looking at the forlorn light bulb, hanging  there on the electric pole in near distance, braving  against the mild rain that had spattered the village whole evening. And then everything around me stopped, it was just me and the bulb. Glowing, and fading, drawing close and then blinding and just before I could get away drawing away from me, I couldn't remember when it was that the power went off, for the glow perhaps persisted in my eyes.

I sensed being touched by someone, but gently enough so as to not break my trance, and then it began growing on me. The touch, the care , the warmth. I could feel the caress, with someone holding me in her arms and taking me to some unknown place, when, a sharp glitter of gold broke the spell, flowing from her ear- rings, that dangled gently, as she fiddled with her eyes, that were lost too , to avoid meeting mine. Drawing her arms together, she let out a  deep sigh. Then, she wrinkled her brows at me, drawing her eyes above together, and smiled feebly, as if asking me, some question whose purpose was in not being answered.

I looked back, and she dropped her eyes, with her smile still spilled all over her cheeks. Drawing herself back together, she raised her head back  and looked outside. I turned away my eyes too, sighed and drew my hands out to collect the  little tear drops that poured from the heaven above, as they did from her eyes, while she stood there reclining on the other pane of the rickety wooden gate.

Passing by!

I look at the women there, dressed in cloths so tight that her breasts are popping out, with her eyes  marked with eyeliners that appear like a sword-cut of black blood. She walks gallantly, with her sharply pointed boots making piercing noise in that silence.

Her smile is benevolent and coquettish, playing around with her beauty and charm. Her radiant face, emanates a look that could snare a frivolous heart, and her petal rose lips, sit together , oozing a nectar out of them, only to be captured.

She is gone now,however, her turn at the counter has been over and her wait too. Us few , still waiting, wished it never ended, but the queue gave in , in no time. Walking out thus of the queue, at the DMV office, I wondered and imagined how different those few moments were to this, how important was beauty to fill this dull and dreary world of order. I turn around the corner, ruminating over my thoughts over the time gone .

I turn around the corner and start walking to my home.

On the other side of the curb lay another beautiful lady, with sun falling gently on her white body. After placing her hairs to one side of her glistening neck, she looks at a brochure in one hand and smokes with another. Her glasses placed by her side sine in the smoke wafting past it. I dote on her for few moments, watching her frivolous activities. Suddenly, she rises to go and moves away in no time, vanishing, as if, in the blistering afternoon sun.

I stand still at the curb, look over the long shade plying over the road from the tall building on the other side. Some shade falls on me too, as I swing on my heels and turn around to go.

The Piano

Listen to it, for it doesn't make much noise, it has been lying this way for years. Some people could find it possible to reflect their own emotions , but others consider it a dumb piece of junk. Yet, you have got to listen to it, roll your fingers over its checkered body, press it gently as you swerve from one end to another, and there it goes, blaring out tunes for you, gentle melody, lilting and moving to and fro as the undulating plains. Then it takes your heart, caresses it and lifts it up in the air, taking its leap it throws away those swaying , scudding clouds that would appear to have forgotten their own ways. Do you wish to to be forgotten too? You can never say, when it was that you went out of the emotion, or feeling. The swing of your heart has moved you from one corner of human darkness to another, and you begin wavering in it. Darkness!

And then you come out of it, look around, the piece had been as junk, and as clunky as it were possible. The place has worn down all of its beauty and it reflects nothing. It rebounds, retracts and pushes back. The end-game becomes the start -game.

Quietude has been overtaken now. Servitude rules the roost. You lament at being human and the piano's lament reflects through you.

The Parting

"Same need binds us together, although evident only when looked at from different sides. For you, it's the fervent desire to wallow in insanity, in surrealness, in being more than merely a decadent body of existence and bridling customs, that  bounds us to perish .In me the same need presents  itself in a different way. To be human, of flesh and blood, of emotions, of hypocrisy , joy and sadness , good and bad. To visit life in it's simplicity, after being wearied of this life that presents itself to myself in codes that are beyond existence and beyond good and evil , as Nietzsche would say.


Yet as we both feel, we do not complete each other . You are too steeped in what I believe to be the inanities and whims of human life, and it's supposedly rational stricture, while I , as is evident from the categorically critical remark, have disabused myself of those simplicities. If they are to be in life, they have to be in sparse amounts, sporadically evident.


He looked at her moist eyes, fidgeting to avoid manifestation of pain, perhaps the moment has come when we close our eyes, and let the storm pass, destroy us in-turn  and create our phantoms .And it rained, thundered ponderously , while some drops rushed to ground below to wash off the marks of steps , etched in history, and to wipe off two humans , in turn.