Where is the sign that
Happiness will find us out,
In time, in this life and not in outer space? But
Never here, never after, never again
Is what is written all around.
No point hanging around here,
Goodbye! is what we hear;
So we leave; leave for the emptiness we have in store.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Prey 3:33
I waited outside the wrought iron gate of the mansion. The gate was closed. The gate, once coloured black, looked foreboding. I could see beyond it and was tempted to climb up it. It was winter and I saw that the snow had been cleared off from the driveway to the front door. Someone must be inside, I said to myself although I could spot no security in the booth outside nor any vehicle tracks on the sideroad to the gate. I pushed the gate open.
I walked across the driveway to the front porch. The ferns siding the driveway looked pale and bereft of colour. As I entered the porch, with its long, thick white columns, the stench hit me. I could only think of the stench that hits you when you open a refrigerator stocked with rotten eggs. Of course, the air around the fridge reeks even after you close it. The front door was closed.
It was late morning and the lone yellow bulb that at the end of the black wire that hung from the ceiling was still on. The stench was unbearable. I knocked on the door but nothing was replied. To the left of the door, there was a nameplate, the name "TINNY" etched in gold across a mahogany name board. I called the name out three or four times but again none bothered to respond to the echo that sounded across the hall through the bay windows open on either side of the door. Should I jump in? I asked myself. Someone has been here in the immediate past. Like last night or early morning today. May be someone like me, knocking on the door of the mansion. I could not stand there any more and trudged back to the front gate. As I walked out of the driveway, the gate, its tines rising and falling in sinuous curves, closed by itself. I chuckled.
---
Outside, a black dog greeted me. It looked emaciated and its skin was dappled with cakes of mud, as if it had rolled and fallen asleep in the ditch across the road. The dog looked at me with what I felt back then as empathy, as if, a while before it too had sensed something and walked to the front porch and despite wanting to jump in through the windows, just turned back and ran out.
I walked out and along the pavement, the tall trees sheltering me from the snow that fell slowly from the sky above. I wrapped the black duffel coat tighter around me, the coat shiny once like a highway reflector but now shorn of gloss and looking hardboiled after years of abuse, and kept walking. The dog did not follow me. It walked across the road to the ditch.
I walked across the driveway to the front porch. The ferns siding the driveway looked pale and bereft of colour. As I entered the porch, with its long, thick white columns, the stench hit me. I could only think of the stench that hits you when you open a refrigerator stocked with rotten eggs. Of course, the air around the fridge reeks even after you close it. The front door was closed.
It was late morning and the lone yellow bulb that at the end of the black wire that hung from the ceiling was still on. The stench was unbearable. I knocked on the door but nothing was replied. To the left of the door, there was a nameplate, the name "TINNY" etched in gold across a mahogany name board. I called the name out three or four times but again none bothered to respond to the echo that sounded across the hall through the bay windows open on either side of the door. Should I jump in? I asked myself. Someone has been here in the immediate past. Like last night or early morning today. May be someone like me, knocking on the door of the mansion. I could not stand there any more and trudged back to the front gate. As I walked out of the driveway, the gate, its tines rising and falling in sinuous curves, closed by itself. I chuckled.
---
Outside, a black dog greeted me. It looked emaciated and its skin was dappled with cakes of mud, as if it had rolled and fallen asleep in the ditch across the road. The dog looked at me with what I felt back then as empathy, as if, a while before it too had sensed something and walked to the front porch and despite wanting to jump in through the windows, just turned back and ran out.
I walked out and along the pavement, the tall trees sheltering me from the snow that fell slowly from the sky above. I wrapped the black duffel coat tighter around me, the coat shiny once like a highway reflector but now shorn of gloss and looking hardboiled after years of abuse, and kept walking. The dog did not follow me. It walked across the road to the ditch.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Vida Perra
Its a little wobbly.
---
Us, we love dogs. They are what we ever want to be but scarcely are: loyal. Their barks, can they ever be anything but inane gibberish that all of us hear but neither understand nor care to interpret? Of course, we love them. We don't treat them as dogs do we?. Never. We care for them. Some even feed them more than what themselves would consume.
Them, do they ever even listen to what we go on about? Do they understand what we tell them when we hold them, raise them so that their eyes could meet ours, pat their heads and show our affection in other ways we are wont to? Do they ever realise that some of us are paid to walk them over cobbled pavements and manicured greens?
---
Life is a bitch.
---
O thy ruler,
when you jumped off your steed after the war,
to try and make sense of what you saw,
and were benumbed by the pile of mortal remnants that battles spew,
the dismembered limbs, the rusted guts, the impaled hearts,
the invisible sweat and tears of those who were just as human as you,
for a fleeting moment or two,
were you tempted to lie there,
to become what lies ever want to be,
but never are:
to be true?
---
---
Us, we love dogs. They are what we ever want to be but scarcely are: loyal. Their barks, can they ever be anything but inane gibberish that all of us hear but neither understand nor care to interpret? Of course, we love them. We don't treat them as dogs do we?. Never. We care for them. Some even feed them more than what themselves would consume.
Them, do they ever even listen to what we go on about? Do they understand what we tell them when we hold them, raise them so that their eyes could meet ours, pat their heads and show our affection in other ways we are wont to? Do they ever realise that some of us are paid to walk them over cobbled pavements and manicured greens?
---
Life is a bitch.
---
O thy ruler,
when you jumped off your steed after the war,
to try and make sense of what you saw,
and were benumbed by the pile of mortal remnants that battles spew,
the dismembered limbs, the rusted guts, the impaled hearts,
the invisible sweat and tears of those who were just as human as you,
for a fleeting moment or two,
were you tempted to lie there,
to become what lies ever want to be,
but never are:
to be true?
---
Friday, March 5, 2010
Us and Them
Why are we mortals obsessed with those who don props and slip out of our three dimensional existence into the bi-dimensional illusion projected onto a faded white screen? Is it the illusion itself? The illusion that whatever happens, they will remain unviolated by our thoughts, unflattered by our compliments, unhurt by our criticism, never undone by our deconstruction of their myth, untouched by our interpretations of their actions, unviolated by the fantasy of our dreams? That they will remain what they are, their fates never hinged to our actions, their destiny never effected by our throw of the dice. Is this how Gods feel when they look upon us from the skies above or observe us from the nether below? Us, a bunch of people going about their jobs, with a few clamouring for Their attention once every while and calling Their names when our time at the shift is over; Their guidance, does it ever percolate onto our minds, does it ever act as the causative for our actions? Or is their control as illusory as ours is when we seat ourselves in a dark acoustically well equipped room full of people who are as strange to us as we are to them, except for the odd known face or two, on seeing whom our hand raises itself for a perfunctory wave, or our face twists itself into a shallow smile? Who are we? Who are they? Who are these people walking around in front of us, stuck and struggling to realise the depth of their lives and living through this two dimensional medium and politely walking away at the end of it all? Who are they? Are they us? Are They us? Are we Them?
