Every now and then
I drift back to those days gone by
When the world seemed to revolve
Around the two of us.
It seems so long, a lifetime away
When you and I were together.
When you would be the one I see
As the first ray of sun poured into the room
Calm and fast asleep.
When you would be the one I see
As the moonlight poured into the room
Your face lit by the milky hues.
Every now and then
I wander down those lanes
of my memories that remain
About the two of us.
I miss the long conversations we had
Being honest, open and free
Sharing things we'd never tell others
And all that we told them too
I miss the times spent being silent
Finding comfort in no words at all
Sharing the songs that make us laugh
The movies that brought us to tears
Finding quirk in the silliest of things
And intellect in nothing at all.
Every now and then
I look back and think
of all the things we said we'd do
Just the two of us.
I miss how you laughed,
that little frown on your nose
I miss your tantrums
yes, I miss those too.
I miss your smile, I miss your face,
I miss the way your perfume smells
It's an ache, a gap, a little big void
A hole that hasn't been filled as yet
I think of ways to hide it all,
I think I'm good at it now
But every now and then
My memories take me back
And I'm back again with you
Sometimes I wish time would turn back again
To when it was just us two.
- S -
So, I've been cleaning out my blog for sometime now. Spring cleaning you can say. And here's something I found that made me look back, think about how my thoughts, the way I see things and who I am, has changed over time.
Interesting, to dig into your mind's musings from years gone by.
Of MICA and Of Love being only in the Air
Valentine's day is three days away.
It's been so long since I've actually felt more alive, so immersed in the world I'm in, so well...how do I put it...well integrated into the scheme of things. There's so much going on in my life that I've thought of as perfect. Yet I've never felt quite so lonesome.
MICA is an immense sensory and emotional roller coaster ride. One that takes you through a journey that's a life in itself. Two whole years have passed and I've gained what I can only say is priceless. Living in a hostel for nigh two years has forged bonds with my fellow batchmates that I can confidently say will be able to stand the test of time. Open your doors and you can shout out to your neighbour for some food and get two abuses and a pack of chips in return. Three hundred individuals of similar mentality in a twenty and two acre campus makes for some great times together! Parties till the break of dawn and beyond, midnight snacks at Chhota, drowsy classroom projects, weird story nights, poker, badminton till 4 am...yeah! This is the place to be.
Yet in all of this, I do not know why, but I feel lonesome. I barely talk about this to anyone though. It's been what...three years or so since I've been single. And I now miss that companionship...
Culcomm (Cultural Committee at MICA) has decided to set up a Prom night to get all those couples-to-be together. Taking a friend to prom just isn't what I see it to be. Remember Neha's story? (read it here if you haven't) Prom's like that...it's kinda special. More so since my school didn't have a prom in the first place.And I've not really found that special someone with whom I share the same wavelength so to speak. Many have, and it's just amazing to see all of them so happy. Even one of my closest friends here, one who believed her heart's closed to relationships for the time being, found happiness with a batchmate of ours. It's just that....how is it that I cannot find that one person to share my life with? Is it really that difficult? Or is it all just some acts of destiny/fate that's gonna "magically" bring us together? I don't know. And now I do care.
It's great knowing that there's that one special person you want to take care of. That one person who not only knows you best but wants to keep knowing more about you. She's your best friend, the yin to your yang, the addition to your subtraction, she's the cadbury that lifts your spirits when you want something sweet, the sunlight that drenches you in its warmth. Quite simply she gets you.
And I miss that.
.
This is an ongoing story between the wonderful Anuradha and myself. You can read the previous parts here: Valhalla - I Aurora - II
He left his lookout point and stomped back homeward bound, muffled words of curse breathing out from behind his shaggy beard. As he walked down his oft-taken shortcut through the market, tired but beaming faces greeted him, bowing their heads slightly in acknowledgement. All he did was nod back at them and keep walking. But a few steps through a lane and across the main town square brought a familiar sense of calm about him. He looked up only to smile when he realized where his subconscious walk had taken him to. Up ahead stood a simple tall house, brown and yellow like the soil it stood on. A single lit lamp greeted the doorstep. There was nothing extraordinary about the house from the looks of it; although a row of holly and creepers had found their way around the walls, and wildflowers had grown abundantly from its walls. It quite gave the impression of a simplistically-made clay structure decorated by an eight-year old. But, as with all Earth Shifters, what's above the soil was just the beginning. From within, the soil had been tugged and turned and frozen in place by the fire-fans they used to dry clay, into unique, intricately detailed artworks drawn directly on the walls. The iron and copper in the soil had been manipulated to lend their colours to the art. A smooth earthen staircase lined with a soft carpet of moss and grass, lit by a row of wax candles led down and underground into the elaborate construct that they called home.
His father, although a soldier, had a keen sense of architecture, which he'd put into the home he had so lovingly built for his family. One flight down the staircase led the eye to the immense vastness of the room it opened up to. Ten feet underground and twenty-five feet wide, the living room was a combination of the brute power of shifting tons of earth and the delicate touch of a keen eye. This, like all rooms, were round, ensuring all the heat and wind stayed directed towards the epicenter of each room. Thin columns of shafts ran along the walls and all round the room, starting at just a few inches off the ground and broadening up at the top as they ran towards the central cortex of the ceiling and then straight up to the surface. One large column ran vertically from the surface to the centre of the roof, and through that shaft ran a large oval jewel. Smooth when it was dark outside, it was easy to miss the complex beauty of this curiously placed object partly jutting out from the roof. But when daylight hit the surface and poured down through the column and onto the stone, the complex network of leafy patterns that ran through the jewel refracted the sunlight and spread it across the room, lighting it up with a soft milky golden hue, just perfect to sit with his beloved wife and watch their children play. Rainwater accumulated through what seeped through the soil and into large vats that they used to drink from. The river-water, though, provided a year-long supply of water to whoever needed it, but as his father used to say, "There's something about the rain that quenches even the weariest of traveller's thirst without drinking a single drop."
He was just about to step into his house when something made him turn around, something that tugs at your stomach when you desperately need to do something and you're walking the other way, something he called his real gut feeling.
He strode out his lane and turned right, towards the library. Something had struck him. Something that might change things forever for them. Maybe, just maybe this war could have been averted. And even if not, things could get a lot more worse if his hunch was true. He hurried up the broad white marble stairs and burst into the records room.
"Eleanor! Where are you?" he called out, the urgency in his voice cutting across the silence of the closed bookhouse.
A light, almost casual voice floated in from the northern end of the library, "Why do you always have to make so much noise, warrior? This is a house of knowledge, not battle. Calm your voice and tell me what you need."
He turned around to see tall figure against the large windows of the building, holding a candlestick and slowly stepping down the stairs. The light of the flickering flame highlighted the woman's deep-set cheeks, wrinkles of age not quite hiding the beauty of her features as they once were when she was younger. Thin-cut lips pursed in light irritation of being disturbed after dark breaking into a light smile at the sight of her visitor. He always had something interesting to say, this one. She looked down to avoid stepping on her heavy set pearl-white dress as it billowed around her feet as she walked. A pair of metal-bent spectacles set with tempered glass lenses hid the bright, curious green-gold eyes that were telltale of her clan.
"Eleanor. The stone." he said, hurrying towards her.
Before he could go on, she spoke with her calm demeanor, "I know. And it took you long enough to realize it. Come, we have much to talk about."
She turned without another word and gestured him to follow.
Far out in the darkness, the stone glowed ever so slightly, atop the Central Hall, A heartbeat was all he felt he heard within the silence of the library, but that fleeting moment caused him to turn around and peer in it's direction out the window.
Must have been my tired mind playing games, he thought and shrugged it off as he followed Eleanor into the inner chambers of the Library.
This is an ongoing story between the wonderful Anuradha and myself. You can read the previous parts here: Valhalla - I Aurora - II
There was something to be said of the warrior blood that ran in his clan. From the time he had been a boy, his father, a veteran-at-war had taught him the art of Earth-Shifting. It all fascinated him at first, trying to focus his energies into the palms of his hands until they started tingling and quivering, and then pushing it from his fingers into the small rock, trying to melt and mold it into a nice, round shape.
"You should be able to command your energy so well that neither your hand nor your mind waivers when you release it.", he remembered his father's voice speaking it a hundred times over, as he touched the rock and stepped back to see it rumble, crumble and reform itself into a giant winged hammer.
"Remember son, strong as a hammer, and twice as hard."
Endless days and some more nights of parrying with his friends, wrestling each other into the mud and using the same soil to their advantage, he enjoyed it all! They said he was gifted with an imagination that set him apart from most of his clan. While others built up immense pillars of stone with a single punch to the ground, he would raise a column of spiked turrets, not unlike a giant mace, and bend the stone over with a touch to pound whatever was unfortunate enough to be in its way.
He had practiced, beaten, got beaten, bruised, even broken and held down by the veterans of the art. Yet he would get up and strike again. And again. He had some big shoes to fill in his father's prowess and there was neither time nor room for error. How could he have known that the very blood he spilled would be what raised him above everyone else. He had soon grown faster and stronger than the others, and more skilled than most.
As he peered into the darkness, the control of the years of practice steadying his mind, the cool wind wove through his hair. The word had come as if carried by the wind, bringing a warning that was directed to him, and him alone.
No, it could not end here. He could not end.
The war had started in his family's name, and in his name it had ended. Hundreds had given up their families, their livelihood and their lives to make right the wrong that was done unto him.
He could not buckle now, when peace had finally set in.
He looked upon the horizon that seemed to sink into the darkness of the sea, broken only by the moonlight reflecting off the waves like chinks of diamond skimming the surface of the water. As the clouds cleared off like floating mists along the valleys in the distance, silhouetted against the moonlight, he saw a lone figure standing by the beach, her lithe figure broken only by the wind billowing through her robe, defiant and powerful.
He drew a whiff of energy from within, his eyes aglow with the green-gold power he drew from the earth and tapped his foot where he stood. A cloud of dust flew several feet into the sky. A show of power, and a reminder of who had won the war.
"Damned Wind Keepers", he muttered under his breath and turned around.
It was a warm, balmy night. The wind had just started picking up from a light draft to that high-pitched howl that only you can hear. He stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down into the abyss, contemplating that first step towards the quick embrace of eternal darkness.
He'd had enough. He'd done too much.
He could neither sleep at night, nor would his body allow him to stay awake.
His nightmares had crawled out of his sleep and into a sleepless hallucination of reality.
He wanted no more.
It needed to end.
The past four years had been one big war, from the barbaric tribes invading his homeland from up north, to the mysterious scarred scavengers from the wastelands beyond. Ever since his mine workers had started digging at the foothills of the Grey Hills, it had been one misfortune after another. At first, he'd thought that it was just the alignment of the stars. Why, he'd thanked their stars and the four Gods when they'd unearthed the immense crystal rock underneath a landfall of rocks and rubble. It now sat atop the Central Hall at the heart of his hometown.
That was when it started.
That evening flashed before his eyes as if it happened just a few moons back. He had been resting atop his favourite lookout point - a small overhanging piece of land on which stood a massive lone cypress tree - a sole sentry to the town. A few grey clouds in the sky silhouetted against a waxing moon spoke of a warm night ahead. He'd laid his head against the tree and sat there, staring at the vast, empty sky, the murmur of the townfolk sitting down to dinner not-so-far beneath him. Somewhere in the distance, a solitary seagull called out for the last time before landing his wings down for the night. He looked left and out to the Central Hall, admiring the crystal that had become the crown jewel of his clan. How brilliant it looked in the moonlight!
Maybe a little too brilliant, he thought. The moon is at a wax, not enough light for anything to shine as brightly as it was.
Maybe he was mistaken.
Maybe it was the lack of a sound night of sleep.
He looked back up at the sky, settling back against his seat, ready to just drift off to sleep when he heard something that send a chill down his spine and jolted him back to reality.
It was no wolf howl, neither was it the hiss of a viper. It wasn't even the scream of a drunk ravaging some woman unlucky enough to be caught unawares in a dark alley. That was all known and familiar.
This. This was different. It was closer, much closer. Too close even.
The whisper came with the wind, spoke a silent word in his ear, a shivering breath of syllables put together,
"Die."
He stood up straight, palms sweaty, clenched against his dagger.
All he saw were clouds.
Written quite some time back on Republic Day, I kind of got an urge to post this tonight.
Republic Day of India.
Sixty glorious years since Dr. Rajendra Prasad signed the Constitution that allowed India to think on it's own two feet. After all, what's Independence without a way to govern. Sixty years since the nation handed over power to it's people, the very citizens who gave their love, life and blood for the elusive bird called freedom. Such devotion towards the country was rewarded with the power to choose who governed them. Sounds just about perfect doesn't it?
Well, we've come a long long way from that "One nation one voice" era. That one resounding, resonating voice of a nation has now been split into a thousand individual voices screaming to gain control, to be heard over the ear-splitting din. What is a Republic really? Is it the best way to govern a country - to let the people decide who gets to call the shots; Or is it just a simple enough way of knowing whose shoulder to rest your gun on?
Corruption abounds, about fifty percent of our elected representatives, according to media reports, apparently have some shady past records. That's every other MLA or other politician that you vote for. And those who don't are slowly being dragged into the mess. Secular state...Fifty different sects fight for their own share of the country. Then where does the country go?
That's just the cynical me talking, but what's to refute in my argument? Twenty one years since I was born and the only two songs that I hear every year, twice a year(dummies read Republic Day and Independence Day) are "Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon" by Lata Mangeshkar and "Vande Mataram" by Rahman. Where's the new-age, ultra-aware youth-oriented music industry? This year is the first time I've heard of a song being declared a nationalist patriotic song that everyone should stand up to. You know which one I think is the true song of the nation?
This one.
And the latest song above is a remake of this. Seriously guys, there's a lot more creativity and initiative in the music industry to do more than one remake in twenty years.
Anyway, enough dissing my country...with all the love that I wrote the Independence Day post, I truly think, with all the quirks, our country is the greatest.
Where else would you find a Muslim, a Hindu, A Sikh and a Parsi living their years separated by just a brick wall, and sometimes not even that.
Where else would you see a palace built in memory of the love of your life?
Where else will you find the largest gathering of people in the world, once a year?
Where else do you find the answer to life in four compendiums?
Where else in the world do you find 18 scheduled languages, 114 other languages, 216 mother tongues,96 non specified languages, and totally up to 10000 languages spoken by people, yet roaring with one voice when one man comes to the crease with a bat?
Where else would you find the world's most efficient Six-Sigma (one error in SIX MILLION!) coveted by a bunch of guys delivering home-made food?
Oh the list can go on, and on, and on! It's not for nothing that they say, Saare Jahaan Se Achha, Hindustan Humaara!
Night falls and the clouds loom low,
And the wind whistles it's forlorn melody.
The pitter-patter of the rain, the sudden flash of lightning,
and for an instant, the whole world's still.
Birds seek shelter under leaves and oak,
While the four-legged ones scamper to hide.
Heavy drops of ice-cold water from the heavens above,
That's all can be heard, for the whole world's still.
As the rains slowly fade away into the night,
The world seems to come alive,
As one sound subsides, another takes it's place,
With the sounds of a thousand voices' relieved sigh,
But wherefrom the voices come, no one knows,
For they come from the darkness of the night.
The rains have gone, but the clouds fill the sky,
With no sun to light the void.
And then you come out of your hiding place,
tiny lantern of the night,
One little drop of golden hue, and then a thousand more,
Setting the bushels aglow.
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