31 Dec 2011; 1.57 AM

The last few hours of the year remain. The last twenty two. I was watching a movie just now. And it made me think. No, not the movie. But the banal act of sitting down and watching one. I had bits and pieces which felt like a cinematic deja vu. Chunks of it that I had seen before. And now that it is over I feel disgusted. The movie was fine. On a better day I might have even enjoyed it. Morgan Freeman never disappoints. 

Tonight, however, I wish to write.

Never mind everything else. I just wish to write tonight. Just want to play with some words here. Just wanna stroke 'em, juggle 'em, throw them up in the air and catch them off guard. I wanna pet them, spoil them, make them mine.

As I see out of the window, I see different hues playing against the dark backdrop of the night sky. I hear they're flashing lights somewhere up the London Eye for New Year's perhaps. I see no lights but only the reflections. Making the 'welkin' gleam! The clouds seem awashed with the most interesting hues - purple and blue and pink and green..all random all brilliant. It looks good and comforting. Especially because it is right there. I don't even have to move an inch to be able to see it. It's right there. Just saw some white light dazzle in the sky, as if the moon's been waltzing by itself.

I will try and write more tomorrow. But if I don't then let it be known that the year has been spectacular. I would always remember 2011 as a wonderful, thoughtful, surprisingly charming an year. A lot changes in an year. Doesn't it?

Sigh. I don't feel very good tonight. My wish to be able to go away for a while has remained unfulfilled. I am neither in pain nor uncared-for. I just wish to know me better. Perhaps spend some more time with me would set it right. I shall do that more often now onwards. 


PS: I miss you bad, Panther..I wish you'd just come running back to me.

the courtroom of conscience

Words elude me like never before. I say I am sorry but they still don't speak with me. This is an attempt in perseverance. I write much like a child who knows she has erred and who, in an awkward nervous fashion keeps standing at the doorway. I too stand there, with my head bowed and hands tied. I am not apologetic for not writing - not here or otherwise. But for that because of which I was not able to talk to myself. Writing would have required an honest reflection and for many days I had kept averting my gaze. But then words precede me, as always. I was 'dropped' and rightly so.

The part of me that writes had ceased to talk to the part of me that wants to write. If it has happened to you, you would know the agony it can cause. It was an injury upon a wound. Words, my precious palanquin bearers, took sides with the former. I choked at times, but I did not have the strength to face me here. For in here one has to be most naked. Brutally, beautifully - naked. And utter exposure needs unfaltering conviction.

I have realised what writing is to me. It's worship, it's prayer, it's the answer. It's the one most honest act I ever do. Something that's as much mine as my own child would be. Even more perhaps. And when I couldn't face myself in words - oh I felt dismembered - as if left abandoned at the outskirts of the same cobbled streets that were (are) home to me. 

Often in the past I have thought about how it is the biggest sin - doing what one does not want to do. That there is to be dignity even in one's sins - this dignity toboggans from a 'want' - which is the expression of one's own volition. The 'will' fills the cognitive senses and lead us up to a decision, however dastardly it may be. It would be lesser an evil to skip morality, commit a wrong, if only one has/had a 'want'. But when you do something you did not even 'want' to do - you couldn't have caused a bigger ignominy and disrespect to the 'self'. If there is a bigger sin than sin, it is sinning without wanting to.

I whispered apologies to me a hundred times. But the writer wouldn't allow for unjustifiable mistakes. Not from me. 

The courtroom of conscience has room enough for reason, excuses, even tomfoolery. It has many windows too for one to take flight and escape. But there are no doors from which one could walk out with dignity, unless one has justified oneself. Yet, how to justify something I did not want to do? My standards are engraved in stone, the bars are always high. I could find no justification. And so I struggled. I couldn't and wouldn't flee from the windows. And I could not walk out the doors too.

And so here I stand, staring at the floor in obeisance. Hoping.

crayons

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