Tippy.

Everywhere I go, everything I do, I look over my shoulder and can feel your hovering presence. As if having you follow me around was not enough, soon you entered my dreams, leaving me cold and helpless. And since then and it has been quite a while now, you would agree, there is no getting rid of you.

I don't know why you choose to hang around, I have tried for you to lose your way. I have put on loud music so you won't hear me, I often changed my route to work, so you wouldn't follow, I dressed up different so you wouldn't notice me but everything failed. I even stopped writing so you would have no access to me. I stopped smiling in pictures, I stopped eating, I stopped walking. I avoided being alone. I locked me up in my room yet I knew you were lurking near my door, your nose twitching for a waft of a smell that might be mine.

Crazy as it may sound, I have no option but to meet you now and perhaps know you better. I have been so busy avoiding you that I never even took a good look at you. Enough of chasing and dodging - I want to now sit with you over a cup of coffee, no foam. Just you and me and all that we have to say to one another or have already said without really acknowledging the other's presence. There must be so much we want to talk about.

So there it is now. I will give you a name my stalker, and you may call me whatever you fancy. I will write to you. I will write about you. Here, I have already come up with a name. I will call you Tippy, suits you about just right. 

फूल-प्रूफ़

नेहा. सब कुछ समझना इतना भी ज़रूरी नहीं। तुम्हें क्योंकर लगता है कुछ है भी समझने को. जियो और ख़तम करो! हाँ ठीक है, माना तुम्हें कुछ (अच्छा, बहुत कुछ) बुरा लगा. तो क्या? लगा. लगा. लग गया.

---

आज दिल्ली याद आ रही है. घर याद आ रहा है. कुछ देर को ही सही 'घर' जाना है. कुछ ही दिनों में परेशान हो कर निकलना है वहां से, बड़बड़ाते हुए शायद. तब ही तो वहां जाना, वहां से निकल भागना, सब एक सुगठित प्लान सा लगेगा। फूल-प्रूफ़! ऐसा नहीं की मन में आया और चल दिए कही भी. अरे! हमें तो पता था की हम परेशान हो जायेंगे! और कुछ साल बीतेंगे तो कहेंगे खुद से - आह! कितने दूरदर्शी थे हम!

सच ये है की इन आँखों में नाम-मात्र भी दूर-दृष्टि नहीं है. कभी तो लगता है दृष्टि ही नहीं है. इधर-उधर गिरते-पड़ते चलते हैं. कुछ दरवाज़े खट-खटाते हर शाम. फिर खुद ही से कहते हैं, "अंधे हो क्या!"

---

क्या बकवास लिखा है! और तुम पढ़ते भी गए!

a homage in waiting

That moment when you want to be honest and make a clean abreast of everything, not that you have sinned to the full but because it's time. With your givings and misgivings and everything. When you want to cease resisting and surrender.

Someone like her would never submit to a happy forever, however much she wishes her forever to be happy. She'd need to first have a fight to fight inside of her, would need to be made to bow down, would need to be ruled in order to make her love. And at the same time, she'd want all the world at her feet and that he should bring it to her and subtly so, without caring if she knows. All this in thought, HIS thought! She craves to stand in obeisance, in reverence of him, in submission to his will. Why? Because she believes that he is. And there she wants to stand silent, as if it were a secret she'd never tell him about. 'Idol' worship had always been so essential to her. But never did meet her a God.

----

"You told me not to lose faith. But I am. It is slipping out of my hands tonight."

no pasó nada

Everything will be fine. I will write and I'll be fine. I will read some and it shall restore what I seek so intensely right now. Nothing has 'happened'. Nothing really happens here, does it? It all falls through dark chasms, or creaks, if you like. For long I have waited for things to 'happen'. That's all what it is all about. A few more minutes and it will pass I know, for I'm keeping time. And then - a world would be saved! Perhaps this is what happens when the dust settles. Sometimes you grow so accustomed to the dust that clarity becomes a stranger in your bed. The impenetrable clarity. And takes a moment getting used to. The speck in the eye then becomes a succour, the incessant rubbing - a daily ritual - a false absolution.

रास्ते का एक काँटा, पाँव का दिल चीर देता
रक्त कि दो बूँद गिरती, एक दुनिया डूब जाती!

a fear

Today, tomorrow or one of these days, there will be more of life in me. But right now, as I trudge my way through the cobbled streets of my mind, my boots tapping at the stones, there is a fear, an apprehension and a lone voice. That perhaps I might not recover from these notions that have found home in me. That perhaps all else that I cared for might have to give up on me. Obstinacy then might become my motto and I be it's slave for life.

I have been unable to write for long, you must have noticed. How I used to go on and on on these pages. How there used to be more to say and less to fear. Now there sits a fear unafraid, or should I call it an uneasy possibility. That my words might snap at me one day. Pierce their fangs into the fingers that tend to them and be right in doing so. They might stand upright in front of me and ask, "whither belongeth thou?" What will I ever tell them?  To whom will the cowardly me go?

In that it is bliss to have the fearlessness of a child. The blatant ignorance or waving off of reality, responsibility and consequence, even if punishment awaits at the other end. The lack of intent or purpose. The task at hand is then their world, the task in itself the incentive. But one cannot have a realisation and still be a child. It just doesn't happen that way.

extracts

"The journey is my own but you give it momentum, you give me a push and I take off. Soaring high, breathing in life till I hunger like a child and quietly land by your side. As if to be with you is all I have known. With you I learn and surmise, I sit, drink, eat and play with my words and make love, yes."

"You wanted it once, you want it no more, you might or might never feel it again. Your calling is something else and the rest must be a distraction for you. As life unfolds I might be standing nowhere for miles around. I like you for all that as much as I would like you to come to me. Because I like you taking decisions. And I realise that nothing is for ever. I'd like to witness your journey - back and forth - in ideas and forms, if it is meant to be."

"My love finds peace when you actualise your self. Each moment that you live for your self I feel you're freeing me. If you are an extension of me then how can I begrudge you your freedom? How can I ever resent your decision?"

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Yun Hi

Tumhein chhuna hai
Jaise tum ho koi cheez meri
Jo bhule se daraaz ke
anjaan kisi kone mein pari mili

Suraj ki roshni ki tarah
Darwaaze se aate dekhna hai tumhein
Khirki ki salankhon se taakna hai tumhein
Jab sham ki sair ko jao tum

Har raat tumhein bayaan karni hai
Har subah neend se jagaana hai tumhein
Hairaan hona hai ki tum ho sath mere!
Pareshan hona hai kabhi tumhare hone hi se!

Ek saans mein pi jana hai tumhein
Har ghoont mein milaana bhi hai.
Tumhein ittalah tak nahi karni
Par sab kuch bataana bhi hai

Tumhein chhuna hai
Jaise tum ho koi cheez meri
ajaan kisi bayabaan se kone mein
jo mujhe pari mili!

Kuch kalam se ikhtiyar karna hai
thora lafzo pe bithana hai tumhein
Gar khamoshi koi zabaan hoti
Shayad yun hi kehti main usey