Whose Thoughts are these?

The liquid was turning the right shade of purple , was it more of  mauve or violet I wondered ,but then again I couldn’t really point out .The clump of a vague substance at the bottom of the bubbling liquid began to take a form. A gradual transition from a dog’s turd to a squishy Jell-O form.

There was a sense of happiness that bubbled inside me just like the liquid in the jar. A sense of promise that was restored from within as I stared at the ethereal glow of the clump.

I slowly reached out for my pocket watch, but the darkness that made me see things usually, closed out on me .This in turn made my watch stop ticking abruptly. There was a moment of dead silence that echoed in the darkness. The heart that was etched on the cover of the pocket watch thumped faster.

To be in pace with the heartbeats that resonated in my pocket ,in a panic I reached out for the incandescent purple liquid and let it warm my hands until the heat burned .Very slowly and very methodically I put my burning hands into the bubbling and picked up the squishy clump that exactly replicated an intelligent brain. But then it slipped from my fingers, bounced on the floor and just fixed itself on top of my sheared off skull. Prettily perched like a cuckoo over a nest.

The ticking of the etched heart finally stopped but by then the darkness swallowed me, leaving behind a faint lavender smell. It reminded me of Her and for a minute I thought like Her before everything inside me broke down to reality forever.

Re-Stacking the Dominoes

It’s not often you dig down your memory lane for that one important person who knowingly or unknowingly changed the way you see things. But again that’s the thing about this very selective memory of ours, we remember all the disappointments the regrets but we sure do forget those little instances which subtly altered the course for us. These instances sometimes seem like the beach, where every high tide leaves behind a distinct impression that can never be altered or seen again twice. one such high tide is the introduction of Miguel into the very plain and mundane life of Nita.

“I’m Miguel and I shall be your Spanish professor, but that does in no way mean that I am better than you ! “. Miguel’s this introduction would be forever recorded in Nita’s mind ,for no one before or after has ever been so honest to her. But then again Miguel was what the world saw as a drifter, for he couldn’t stay put in one place for too long.There were times in the Spanish class where he would teach nothing about Spanish culture and every honest thing about life that others would shy away from saying out loud, in fear of the acceptance of those facts, for themselves and for the audience too . His curiosity was immense, sometimes so overpowering that he had to try everything that he came across. He’d say “the world out there is existent just to put rubber stamps and labels on everything that we do ,so I might as well get many of them(labels)”and so he got labelled everything from a pilot ,a chef , a diver ,a junkie ,a nurse, an engineer ,a businessman, a vagabond ,a teacher …these labels weren’t due to the lack of ambitions, for he had plenty of them to last a lifetime, only his pursuit of these goals were off-track.

Where Nita couldn’t take her life seriously enough making plans for every second, Miguel became a friend who would believe that those plans would work even though she didn’t. “Nita, those future plans don’t matter without a history to share behind”. Miguel became the friend who wouldn’t be afraid to quit something because he didn’t enjoy it anymore , in fact it was where Nita learnt that there was no adjustment for choices about one’s life, if it meant mucking yourself about. He subtly refocused the looking glasses through which she saw her life, for she realized that the dominoes lines wouldn’t fall so easily if you made plans with the scope of flaws in them, and the failing of dominoes is not necessarily a bad thing because the possibility of re-stacking them up would never occur until the chain collapses. It was a life lesson she learnt amidst the craziness of a few found friendship. A friendship that everybody knew wouldn’t last, but made effort to do so anyways, because “it was worth nothing and that’s just the beauty of it” as Miguel would say.

The drifter moved to another continent to work while he opened up new doors bracing for the failures but never trying to fit into molds. Nita ,well, she took the work she wanted to dream off and let the chips fall because controlling them would just be stupid .She packed her bags ready for things to tumble down, to study what she likes with no possibility of a fixed future and that just suits her fine.

 

PS: I do not know how I never published this post when it remained in my drafts for the last year or so.Teachers ,Friends happen to teach us a lot about ourselves and somehow revisiting them feels like looking at an older version of oneself and yet appreciating the person who you are now.

Doors.

It starts slowly, this need to travel, the need to escape, to leave that idea of you behind which was being lugged around. Unneeded yet attached to you by a strange umbilical cord that is difficult to cut off . The idea then builds up pixel by pixel until it becomes more than your being.This is exactly how the tables turned for Alice.

At first she shrugged away the idea thinking of it as an inconvenience, in the way of getting to all her stone clad plans of life . She ignored to see the pixels together , but then one day she just turned around and all she saw was that her plans were crumbling down and just that  ‘idea’ was breathing down her neck. The next thing she did was to run home or the illusion of home, packed her bags  or rather a duffel filled with the bare necessities and just leave.

When she stepped out of the door she didn’t see the need to say a goodbye but rather a thank you to her boyfriend of 8 years. Mostly thanking him for bearing with that person who had no inkling of what or who she was. She contemplated on leaving behind  a post card explaining everything that was going on in her mind but it felt like a slap on her face than his , so she just hastily scribbled “I LOVED YOU” on the postcard that she got him five years ago while she went on that trip to Crete. She turned it upside down,maybe like a symbolic gesture  and put it on the refrigerator. When she stepped out of the door, for the first time in all her adult years she didn’t take her keys along, not because there was somebody waiting for her to return home but because she knew that things would have to come to a full circle with her ideas before she even considers to knock on a door that she closed.

Her first step faltered, a part off her was holding her back, but she took that first step for the guarantee of an uncertainty , for a madness that wasn’t her. She probably signed up for a death wish or she just saved herself from an eternity of boredom that would eventually overtake. The curiosity to drink on something that wasn’t her first choice or was remotely even placed in her list of choices took over and she walked. For the first time she walked towards nothing that she knew of yet she walked and not rush about, her gait had a secret to tell but everything was hushed up,buoyant with the hope that she could reach the place that she never thought she could.