Vacant stares populate the empty night around me. The warm neon folds into me like a whisper. Solitude can be a strange companion in an urban setting where you are never truly alone. The buildings lean onto you like old friends. The roads slither under your wheels. The traffic seems to part beneath your defocussed gaze.

As you navigate the night the great drift happens. An interchange between two worlds. One second you are drowning in a cacophony of great sound and in the next instant the world seems to stop and take a deep breath. And you enter this sudden bubble of calm where every sensation is muted like snatches of music heard from a great distance.

There is still some motion all around. The hustle and bustle of people rushing home. The excitement of the pub crawlers mixed with the lonely despair of the pavement dwellers. You take everything in but nothing registers for you are in a world of your own making. You feel as if you are beneath a giant pillow. Your senses seem to register every sensation with a one second delay.

One after another thoughts drift in and out like travelers in transit. The movement is pleasant and comforting. Random figures drift into focus beneath the glare of a billboard. A passing headlight illuminates graffiti scrawled on the side of a dustbin. A new politician beneath a half-peeled poster stares at you with still intact dignity. You collect the different frames for future perusal.

The pale beginnings of a midnight hunger pulse beneath the perfect calm. It is time to take the roundabout and head home, leaving the neon night behind in the arms of approaching dawn.

Peace Orchestra – Who Am I?

Light stains mark the face of this night. It is a night made of monochrome. A night with flashes of neon. A night with a hint of copper. A night with the grace of a whisper. This is a darkness that drives us, a darkness of the damned.

The road leans forward with a longing for distant places. It urges me to taste the excitement of emptiness. A pristine ribbon of black illuminated in alternate bands of yellow. The beast under me purrs with delight. A wicked laughter erupts in its depths and passes into me as a shiver down my spine.

The clouds rush to cover the face of the moon. It is cold. A bracing cold that is refreshing. I grin behind my mask of metal. It is time.

First gear. The beast growls with an undercurrent of a whine behind the baritone. It grips the road with its black claws and hurtles forward. The white lines rush forward and disappear beneath me. There is the wind picking up. I embrace the night with my gloved hands.

Second gear. The road becomes a continuous streak of black. The sound of the beast echoes off the buildings bordering the road. We hold the darkness between our throbbing hearts. I snake past hulking wagons and shivering cars.

Third gear. Acceleration is the key to annihilation of the senses. A mad need for speed cripples caution. Gears grip, mesh and release.

Fourth gear. There is a roar in my ears. The roar of blood and wind. Surroundings dissolve into a rapid blur beyond my narrow zone of focus. The road is a black hole on the edge of the universe. The beast has settled into a steady drone that rumbles through my body. I whip past silent intersections and flash past sudden bends in a graceful curve. It is an exhilaration of speed and sensation. The neon washes over my mask in an intense shade of yellow.

The world is an empty road egging me on. I’m drenched in a curling wave of adrenaline. The numbers on the console mean nothing. Lights blink in the faint hope of arresting this mad dash. But it is too late. The beast has taken control. I give in without wondering where it is leading me. It is the journey that counts, not the destination. We are united. In one insane instant we pass into the darkness past the shadows cast by the pylons into a world where raw speed is the only answer left.

The wind whispered my name today as I was walking with my lonely melancholy. The air was crisp, filled with the fragrance of some far away song. The trees were like old men stooped over their chairs to keep track of life walking on by. My eyes strayed up to the sky where clouds collapsed into words of polite wonder. The path led on without a bend or a rent. My senses were filled with the desire for life. I took off my spectacles to look at the world around me through a blurred inspiration.

Sometimes one sees the door but not the distance up to it. The silent signals of another world wheeling away on the outskirts of a solitary society.

There were many holes. Too many that needed to be plugged to staunch the flow. In some ways it was a lost cause as new leaks sprang up as soon as an old one was fixed. Where did those holes come from? Why did they cause so much torment?

I touched her cheek to seek reassurance from the warm blood flowing beneath. She was beside me, wrapped in dry dreams. The distance between our minds separated our hands. But the words that existed in our hearts somehow slipped out from between us into the cold around like marbles from a child’s hand and formed footsteps in the endless snow.

The sun came to rest
on his shoulders,
he wiped his tears
and cradled the ball of light.

He spanned the distances
from east to west
and held all the four winds
in his burning breath.

Time stood to the side
as he counted the colors that
swam across the southern sky,
seven colors for the seven continents.

The silence of centuries crept
across his brow and the day
departed with destiny in the
company of history and happiness.

The last light sunk into his eyes
in the shape of a human sigh,
his shoulders tensed to bear
the extra weight of a darkened world.

The black ship was ready to sail
along night’s dark straits, he shook
hands with Time and unfurled the sail,
it was time to leave the night keys behind.

Madonna – The Power of Goodbye

Woke up at 3
In the morning
A sad dream
Still in my eyes

People laughing
Colors changing
Faces dissolving
Music fading

Song #6 – Freak Power

Electricity
Slaps his yellow thigh
Looking at his World
Of light and glass

Circuits twitch
In his topaz eyes
Insulators hum
In his platinum mind

Electricity
Pats his copper stomach
Watching his silvery tentacles
Caress a few billion stony hearts

Plastic smoke swirls
In his metallic innards
Wet blue fire pulses
In his golden nostrils

Electricity
Extends his hollow hands
Enveloping the universal dark
In packets of star-flame

The lights fell
From the heavens
Streaking our senses
With raw emotion

The skies split apart
And showered us
With shattered sounds
And sizzling colors

It was a night
Of pomp and passion
It was a night
Of visual violence

Once upon a time
In a land faraway
There was a man that time forgot

He aged but backwards
The wisdom of age giving way
To the passionate anger of youth

He fought with gods and fairies
To reverse the flow of time
To set right all that was wrong

But alas! destiny denied him
His just victory
He is but a faint memory now
In the eye of his beholder

A year passes and I do not even blink or rather blink too late. I did finally take notice though. So here I’m, still trying to row the boat to nowhere. The stream seems to be drying up and the flow of water is slowing to a trickle but the place is the same. Who knows what lies at the end of the fabled rainbow? Perhaps inner peace, perhaps a sense of arrival or perhaps a persistance of memory?

Memories are very dangerous things. They suck you in, twist space and time, and distort reality until you find it difficult to see or breathe. But here I’m celebrating them in all their mottled glory. Have I succeeded in decoding the many messages they hide?

Before I end here is something I tried on someone I know. I never did get an answer from her but perhaps you can do better!

I’ve a bad habit of reading several books at once. One in the morning, one on the way to work, one at lunch, one before dinner and one just before I sleep. So my mind is a delicious pot pourri of scenes and conversations from wildy different settings! A little snippet from the stream of my conciousness follows:

“I roam through the streets of Danzig, beating on my laquered drum, in time to the rhythmic pounding of shells from German howitzers exploding in the old district. She said she would love me forever and then left the Carribean to the civilized pleasures of Paris with that dashing doctor with a long name, full of an illustrious past. I tried to drown my only love in the arms of a million whores and in the sweet sweat rolling off the bodies of women married to the wrong men. But time did not stop. Instead, the sun raced across the hub, and then hit the dank darkness rising from Ankh Morpork, the city that seems to sleep but in reality is only lying on her stomach trying to scratch a particularly unreachable position on her back. The wizards had still not left the great hall. Dinner had gently segued into breakfast and it looked like lunch would not be far behind the kitchen door. So he somehow liked the work I did in Nuremburg and started giving me other assignments. He asked me to make a blueprint for the Third Reich, filled with monuments that would rival Rome. I was too caught up in the grandness of my work to think deeply about the sheer madness unfolding around me. They gave me a name that meant ‘The Peaceful One’ but my violent past and present seemed to make a mockery of their kind idea. I tried to live up to that adopted name. I became a part time doctor, relieving the poorest of poor of some pain. But my past kept pace with my present and finally caught up with my future. The Bombay underworld needed my expertise.”

Can you guess the names of the books and their authors I’m reading now from the above literary stream I conjured? If you get all of them right you will win the grand prize of spending a special evening with yours truly in a universe where all plans fall perfectly into place!

This post is doubly significant. Apparently, according to my blog software, it marks a century of posts. So here it is to all of you, all the people who visit here so regularly and help keep the flame burning. I hope we will keep building bridges over rivers of thought and emotion. A heartfelt thank you to all you known and unknown visitors here. Without you there would be no light at the end of the tunnel.

They say that god will return
To save the world

But I don’t know whom to believe
So I’ve made my own plans

My neighbor plans to pray for my soul
While his son fucks reality to produce confusion!

Are you aware of your mental avarice?
Ask a stranger to make your will

Can I talk to your conscience?
Like a guidance counselor

My subconscious wants to rebel
Is this the road to nirvana?

Religion is the root
Of all misery and evil
Kill and be killed shall be your anthem
Give god your mind
And he shall give you wisdom

Images flash across my mind
Bright and vivid
In their aimless revelation

“Call god into your bathroom and
Flush him down the toilet.”

I first noticed him when he sat down in the opposite seat vacated by an old woman. Actually, that’s not right. I saw him only when he made a gesture, immersed in a newspaper. There was something vaguely familiar about it. It was an odd one for sure. Roughly every two minutes he would tweak his left ear with his left hand. In all other ways he appeared normal. Even his face did not seem to ring a bell for usually I’m pretty good with faces. And then the circuit closed. But of course, I should have recognized him faster!

I had last seen him about ten years back; on the day he left our lives under a bad cloud. He was the first and last person to rent the extra room to the side of our house. Somehow, after him, we never got around to renting the room to another person. He was about thirty years old then. A very mysterious age you know. It lends the person a certain aura. The aura of being on the threshold of middle-aged cynicism and shedding the last remnants of youthful idealism. Or perhaps I was too young and saw him through the prism of awe. It was the literary air he had. I always had this thing for even vaguely literary people. They were like gods, infallible and distant, talking in fabulous language of things and people I could only dream about. And he was not completely a fraud. He had actually got some of his writings published. For me then that was equivalent to winning the Booker.

He was a master of words. He could weave the most amazing and fantastic conversations. I used to spend hours listening to him. Instead of playing street-cricket or flying kites, almost everyday after school, I’d knock on his door and spend the evenings with him until mother called. Oh what things he would talk about! I’d be carried along by his words to the most exotic places and meet the most colorful and irreverent characters that ever lived; the narrowest house of Amsterdam, the lost streets of Tasmania, Mad-Eye Pillai, Sunset Madhavi, Boston Barney, Willowy Waterson. Each of their stories would be spread over three to four evenings. Later, the words would evaporate like early morning dew, leaving only a vague taste of melancholic sweetness. Like a drug almost and perhaps that’s why I used to hunger for more. Conversation was not needed. It was a monologue. I just had to nod at the right time, make appropriate noises and insert the right words at the right places. When I look back now, even with the burden of hindsight, they seem such beautiful evenings.

But that sudden departure of his ended those mellow evening monologues abruptly. Even now, I do not know what really happened. Mother and father refuse to talk about it. I only have vague rumors and overheard words to fashion a theory. It involved women and abortions. What role he played in that and whether he was really involved is still an open question. It was so sudden that I couldn’t even pester my parents to let him stay. At the time of his departure I was in a state of limbo, confused and curious. Not the best of states to be in. But I can still recall his farewell look. He did not say a thing. He just looked at me. A look full of sadness. The sadness of being misunderstood. A look also of faith perhaps. A faith in me. As if he had the confidence that I’d understand him and not judge him like others had done. That was also the first time I cried in public. But I was careful not to let him see the tears. I just stood there and looked back, a confused kid looking up at his disgraced idol leaving. We did not shake hands or wave. He did not even look back once as he walked away down the street.

And there he was in the seat opposite me after so many years. He had aged badly. No wonder it took me so much time to recognize him. The interweaning years had apparently not been kind to him. There was a certain hardness about his mouth. As if the world had kicked him from one pothole to another. His hairline had receded a lot and the hair was mostly grey in color. His eyes lacked the special crinkly quality they had before. They seemed to have lost the ability to smile. I wondered about what might have happened to him. Had the dark cloud followed him everywhere? Had it not allowed him to rest anywhere? Or was he happily married with two kids and just showing the normal signs of aging?

It would have been a simple matter to talk to him. To remind him perhaps, if needed, who I was, and get into his life again. But something stopped me from doing that. I wanted to remember him as a child’s idol, flawed but real, and not temper that image with the hard reality in between, good or bad. To be frank, my reasons were perhaps more selfish. Deep down, I did not want to change his image of mine as a curious but shy child, always dreaming and in awe of people. Even he would have been disappointed at what I had turned out to be, a lazy fantasist full of broken dreams and unrealistic plans. So I just sat there, surreptitiously glancing at him over the top of a book until my destination arrived. I got down and went home with another reminder from the past to be buried in my garden of memories.

(Note: Final part in a trilogy of fictional portraits. Please keep in mind that the image preceding the text has nothing to do with the text, the words were not inspired by the photo. It is only meant to complement them.)

He is a voracious reader to put it simply. He reads everything, literally everything. It would be wrong to term him as a book worm as that would be falling into the cliché trap. An odd comparison perhaps but he is like Casanova, someone who wants to experience different women. He likes reading everything he can lay his hands on, from trashy romances to deep philosophical tomes and everything in between.

His house is a book lover’s dream and an organized person’s nightmare. As expected books take up every square inch of available space and more if that’s possible. You have to eat with them, sleep with them and even shit with them. Not that you would experience this yourself. It might not come as a surprise to you that he does not socialize. Compared to the excitement, exoticness and mental fantasy he finds in books real people seem to him like those sad characters in a poorly written detective story, utterly predictable and eminently boring.

He has specific types of books at strategic places for particular times of the day. Like, for example, a racy thriller at the dinner table, a word-of-mouth book on the sofa or that deep philosophical tome on the toilet. The last ‘choice’ perhaps needs a sentence of explanation. He feels that the weight of the language in such books makes him crap easier and avoid constipation!

His dreams contain scrolls filled with words from multiple languages. On rare occasions the words take on a human form. A noun looks like a tourist on his first trip abroad. An adjective morphs into that ‘tall dark handsome’ specimen of maledom women invariably seem or at least want to fall for. A verb takes on the shape of a blond woman about to lose her virginity. An adverb forms the outlines of an old man watching pornographic cartoons. He is not repelled by these ignoble images. On the contrary, he has a Freudian fascination for them. Each time they condense in his sleep he takes time out on awakening to try and decipher their panoptical persistence.

These days he is engaged in the study of personal politics. The ways in which we twist and turn situations, emotions, and people to suit our ego-cravings. The subtle study amuses him and also serves as a pleasant break from his eternal intimates. Now, let me shut this window of frozen time I’ve opened onto a slice of his life. Let us leave him to his private projects and textual panoply.

(Note: Second in a trilogy of fictional portraits. Please keep in mind that the image preceding the text has nothing to do with the text, the words were not inspired by the photo. It is only meant to complement them.)

I see her everyday from my window, climbing the ladders of life with the steady rhythm of her brown hair, the careful placement of her nimble feet, the sensuous swaying of her wide hips, the appraising length of her nubile neck, and the glistening wetness of her natural lips. She goes the same way twice, like my watch on its daily constitution. I observe and record, on the other side, passive and undisturbed in my spatial frame of reference.

In her hands is a bag brimming with the white and fluffy stuff which we discover in dreams. The bag is large yet stylish, devoid of any sign, any logo of ownership or corporate corpulence. Its color is indeterminate, aged by the weather of want. She wears the same dress day in day out, neatly pressed and unruffled, a faded olive green short top just coming to a stop over her elegant belly button. A pair of intentionally worn out dark blue jeans, an extreme example of brand hate cover her lower half.

My day does not begin without her habitual appearance and my day does not end without her delicate disappearance. She is like a daily alarm, a common routine of surprised comfort. On her second oscillation she always gives me the feeling that she is humming something, something subsonic yet full of tragic charm, a wise song about the failures of fate. There have been times when I’ve wanted to open my window and call out to her; ask her for the time of the day or some such mundane nonsense. But that would mean breaking my vow of passive observation, entering the chaotic world of quantum karma. I cannot break my personal promise.

Can you tell me the why she fills me with such profound passion? Does she remind me of some forgotten fragment from my past? Not that I know of. In any case, I delve into my ignored memories and look under the stones of aged nostalgia. Here and there, I seem to catch the granite glint of sudden understanding but in a flash it is revealed to be just another smile from the past. Each day I renew my patient vows. I await my hidden signal. The day I get it, I will go out and lift her in my careless arms and live (with her) in the land beyond your blind horizons, forever.

(Note: First in an eventual trilogy of fictional portraits. Please keep in mind that the image preceding the text has nothing to do with the text, the words were not inspired by the photo. It is only meant to complement them.)

Sunshine blasted my eyes
Suddenly
I blinked and tried
To outstare
My spotted opponent

Fragments of light
Slipped away
From my closed fist
And scattered on the floor
Like shattered diamonds

I writhed
In an excess of light
Blinding me, binding me

Screams died
Inside my lungs
Thoughts fried
Inside my eyes

But my ego
Still fought on
It turned on its axes
And spewed darkness
With habitual indifference

I rejoiced
As the light receded
And became a silver wreath
Crowning the tangerine trees

The tree
An attribute of denuded wisdom

The moon
A sign of rounded prosperity

The sky
A tableau of private dreams

All multiple symbols
Of sleepless eyes

They point
To my past mistakes
Like the fingers
Of a forgotten god

I stood
To the side
And let them
Spiral in to
My deepest dreams

A smell of wet earth
A vision of closed doors

I grasped
Their outstretched peaks
And found myself again

We sat around the table looking at the light make patterns on our hands. The place was a vast cavern filled to the brim with people grooving to the big beats. Beautiful women glided through the air with sly smiles playing around their mouths as if hiding the intimate pleasures they could impart to those who dared to touch them. But we were not to be bothered. Sounds and images failed to crash on the shores of our awareness. We were in another world, a world where patterns formed hidden meanings, where life was lived between the lines on a palm, where speech was superfluous, where love flew on wings made of diffused light and where a glance was equal to a thousand words.

Ecstatic tears flowing down our cheeks we linked our hands and burnt packets of star flame with alcohol fires coursing through our souls.

Over the water the light was floating making color patterns. The gossamer light enveloped me in its mellow fold igniting the blue wick of my memory. I saw memories roll across the tunnel of light, shimmering and wavering in their wet intensity. I saw myself in my many moods. I saw her in perpetual hunger, for love and for the final victory. I saw symbols that made sense only to me. I saw sounds that could only be heard by me. I saw the past, the present and the future fused by the light and water of time.

There was that special smell in the air, the smell of imminent rain. I sucked in the air and let the smell wash all over me, letting my head swell with the fresh perfume present in every breath. I could feel the breath of nature flowing inside my body. I love such evenings, perfect for walking along the river, wrapped in a light shawl, hands in your pocket and grey thoughts in your head. Think, think, think; think about nothing in particular but everything in general. Let the cool wind seep into your pores and imagine its footsteps tiptoeing through your mind. What stories does the wind carry? Which people has it touched? How many lands has it passed? How many trees have purred to its gentle cooing?

Everything is steel grey in color. The clouds are low but distant in their huddled masses. People hurry home, rushing to their little holes. Why have we become like this? When was the last time we walked with the innocent glee of a child in falling rain? When did you last open your mouth and playfully let the rain drops wash your tongue?

We run away from nature, our mother and our ancient cradle. We no longer rock to its gentle rhythm. We no longer listen to its faint heartbeat. Our lives now move to the insistent beat of the modern machine. Wake up, run, sit, eat, run and sleep. A useless circle of universal uniformity.

But did you notice? There are still some flowers (you trample) on the edge of the sidewalk outside your office door. Take a look at them tomorrow and share their obvious sadness at a world lost in its egoistic roar. There are still some birds (you ignore) calling out for you from outside the window. Open it and listen to the stories they tell of golden days bygone when man and animal were equal. There are still some trees (you don’t see) sheltering the last remnants of life on the edge. Stand under them and hear the tales they narrate with the soulful lilt of their swaying branches.

The old days have come to pass, I know, brushing away nostalgic dreamers like me into the dustbins of history.

This is the land
I live in
A sliver of the sky
Flowing through
An ocean of leaves

I relive
Everything
In shades of green
On my boat of life
Floating on this sky river