Kohl

She is dying. In sleep she thinks she is a swallow, singing and singing and singing and singing and singing and singing… but no, she’s human. The more she wants to be the swallow, the more sleep evades her. At dawn, she stands before the mirror completely naked and dabs kohl on her lower eye lids until they are smudged in blackness. Then she moves closer to the mirror to admire her eyes. She can’t believe those are her eyes. More like a river, yes they are, more sad, more strange, more haunting, more hurt than any eye she had ever seen. As the day grows older, she suddenly feels shame, ashamed at her bestial nakedness of body and mind. Narcissistic? She knows not. But she hides her body behind her dress, she hides her mind behind her sanity.

“Have you been crying lately? Your eyes look red and swollen these days!” her acquaintances ask.

She never tells anyone about her kohl therapy. She knew they would forbid. They would make sure that she gets to see only her nude eyes. But she loved her kohl, she could never give out the secret. If she is to go blind, she thought, what better way than to love her eyes like her life before she lost them? She hates sunbeams, specially the yellow ones. Doctors would give tranquilizers. She never takes them though, she fears sleeping at daybreak, the time when she can look at her eyes silently. She even admires her sockets, her auburn sockets with their tiny violet veins just beneath her eyes. Sunlight blinds her eyes and thought. As it enters her room through the gaps in the curtains of the window, she sits crouched on the bathroom floor panting for breath. No, she had never smoked a cigarette in her life. Her lungs fail her without reason.

But she is scared. Scared to take the leap. She can merely bruise her knees again and again or prick her fingertips with a sharp needle until cute little red drops start oozing out. Dizzy… dizzy… food nauseates. Egg chicken mutton fish cabbage cauliflower cornflakes apples bananas mixed noodles hakka gravy veg non-veg… the waiter leaves as she vomits on her table and pays the restaurant for cleaning the mess.

The world is revolving. Five revolutions per day. Only blur. Not blindness. Blur. Madness. Nakedness. She drowns. They grab her fair neck and stick it inside the water until she drowns, completely. Does she resist? Does she force her head up to breathe? Does she…

Her dabbed kohl melts down her sallow, ill cheeks. Her tongue is black and salty in pain. She is dying. Maybe death can make her the real, singing swallow.

Old Year New Year

As a child I used to feel strange every time New Year came. I could not distinguish between new and old, torn and full, smile and tears. I would start crying whenever I felt happiness creeping up my frail, fair body; it was like happiness spilling out of my self thorough my eyes… through tears. The children would feel scared of me, the children who were my friends when I smiled.

I wanted to die every New Year. My past simply slipped out from between my fingers and was forcefully pulled towards an unreachable Vacuum. Quiet. Or so it seemed. It seems. I lie like a mass of sensation on my narrow blue bed without a past, a root. Do I float? Do I fly? But then, nothing matters when time dissolves around you and you are dragged into a familiar dream. I take a lot of time in waking up when stories, histories and memories weave this strange mesh of lullaby. And when I do, the sense of loss had gone down the abyss as well. I ask for ice creams. I go to picnics. I watch rom-com movies. I visit friends, family.

The danger of the New Year passes by sooner or later, like Mr. Woodifield I guess, just as a new fly flies in.

Every time I feel equally threatened to know that I am the boss.

Spiral Ways

I lost my life again today

On the spiral, forlorn way

Oh, nothing’s new, all is old

Same dull stories told untold

To keep awake the drooping child

I sing, I curse, I blabber wild

I want to stop, my tongue is dry

But every line just ends in ‘why’

There is no way, there is no way

I will lose life everyday

PTSD of Nationalism in Baaishey Shrabon

[I met Rabindranath in a fine dream]

Me: Gurudev, I love you!

Rabindranath: (smiling saintly) But personal love is selfish love. You would have to extend your heart, and accommodate the entire universe within. True love is universal and indifferent. It melts down any boundary that separates you and your neighbour, the East and the West, Asia and Europe, one human being or one group from another. It is this love that transcends petty issues like political or economic freedom and takes us to a higher plane of being where we all merge into one another without slightest distinction of any sort. So say, is your love this love?

Me: Erm... actually I told you what my mother keeps uttering often. It was not me, see!

Rabindranath: Oh! Then where is she?

Me: (pointing to her at a distance) There!

Rabindranath: Thank you. (smiles). I think I will just talk a little to her.

Me: (smiling ear to ear) Sure! She will be delighted. (aside) Will Maa be able to point to Dida on time? She seems nowhere near...

The Fissure

The fissure has been found and been cleansed of all rubbish. It stands independent. Beautiful. Melancholic. Probably a little violent owing to the newfound nascent nakedness. Its clarity now wrings my goddamn eyes. Its emptiness sprinkles pathos like holy-water.

The consciousness of the fissure is a treasure to be had. To be kept wrapped inside ivy printed handmade papers with care. To be smelt every night like an infant's sleeping hair. To be welled up deep within Margarets during spring and fall.

I do not know if I should lay a white garland by its side...

i am fine, i am fine

daily deaths, a little wine

waiting, tears, and time will flee

but till it does, just let it be...

... of Men and Women

The other day a friend told me that he thinks men are more comfortable with female friends rather than with male ones. On further probing he confessed that he is talking particularly about emotional comfort. Then he went on to tell me how in their group of friends in college, there is this girl Roshni whom everybody wants to be with. If anyone is down, she is the soothing factor. People talk to her about their personal crises and disappointments and find shelter in her empathy. Not that she is extremely pretty or seductive. Not that she is flirtatious. Neither is she anything like extraordinarily generous or talented or helpful etc. It is simply because she is a girl, and she is single.

But then, there is another girl in your group too, said I. What about her? She is the more gorgeous one, right?

Then I got to know that this other girl, who is also a good friend, is in a relationship. And when I expressed wonder at this strange observation, he started generalizing. He claimed that two men can never be as close as two women can be. It is the inherent nature of man to maintain a strict distance from another man. But in case of women, relationships are more flexible. They allow emotions to overpower everyday distance, if required. They are not as rigid as men.

I don’t know whether his point is valid or not, but it definitely made me think. If, for a moment, we consider this statement to be true, why, then I ask, would a man feel emotionally easy only in the presence of a woman and not another man? Why? What is the cause?

1. Women are said to possess a higher degree of emotional quotient. Hence it is more comfortable to express emotions to them who would understand and sympathise whereas in case of men there is this perpetual fear of being unsympathized, even laughed at.
2. Men always feel a spirit of competence towards other men. So they are often extremely insecure to unravel their private agonies to their fellow rivals.
3. There might be an unconscious sexual undertone to this whole project of the man revealing only to the woman. And all the women are more tender and more understanding and more homely and more sympathetic etc. crap, is just a hoax. Because why, otherwise, would these people in the group my friend was talking about choose someone who is single over someone who is not? But then again, does a woman lose her sexuality on commitment?

What do you think?

Please ask yourself this question and feel free to comment. Am hoping to see some really interesting and enlightenening views.