Journey

Its just you and me baby
And dont for even a moment you ever forget it
We have come a long way together
Its been hard sometimes, but even that was fun, come on admit it

We were so many different people all through the years
Right from the city called Mumbai to right now and right here
It was like reincarnation each time we moved along
Fighting and laughing and fighting some more
Like two wildly fluttering flags of freedom in high winds bound deeply together

We will still find ourselves there in the dark sweaty, crazy, starry, windy monsoons of Mumbai
Two clueless young people on edge of reality
Talking to be heard and screaming for understanding
Needing one another so much, it felt like insanity
You and me baby, two hard headed peas in a pod

Then on to new places in a wintery frigid, snowy, drafty, spectacular, Minesotta
Remember will you, the optical illusions
Of fighting for space and cuddling wasn't close enough
The summers, the springs, the rose gardens
And unfailingly returning winter, the wet shoes, the warm coats, hot chocolate

On and Ahead to the Granite State
The mountains, the valleys, the feathery, lacy snow
You and I fused together, no matter the words they werent needed anymore
The weekends in Maine, unspoilt secluded beaches
The walk in Portmouth, the coffehouse we would visit
You would drive for hours to get to these spots, cause they made me happy
How could I ever thank you for the wordless devotion you showered upon me

They all fuse together the other places we have been, be it Chicago or for a while in Big Apple
The Chicago windy gusts, us cowering on the north shore drive
walking like two crazy drunks to keep upright in the draft
Why did we do it, just because we could, deligently walking in a road made of snowy soup
The Manhattan crowds and gazing at famous buildings
Feeling so lost and yet secured with you beside me
Living in that place on Long Island, I waited all day long for you to return in the evening

So you see now its just you and me baby
Bound together soul to soul
We were so many different people in one life time alone
Now we are here on the far west coast
We walk in sunny, breezy, opulent San Francisco
You and I travellers of ages
Hand in Hand
Words dont need to make it to the lips
As long as we are together..

Life Just Is

Thats true, life just is. Philosophy and wishful coincidence and interpretations aside, it just is for the sake of it is.
I was watching this music video by Lady Hawke, song being Paris is Burning, and not because I'm so hip I'm in anyway in touch with current music trends and all that. I go to a gym and they have this one TV namely the BTV as in Bally's TV playing a set number of music videos over and over again day after day. When I'm on a cardiac machine, I'm directly facing the said TV, hence connecting the dots...Lady Hawke. I know nothing of the lyrics as I have my own i pod cranked up to high heaven loudness, its the video that "loopily" enough gets me to this sentiment of life just is.
She has this bland yet brazen expression on her face and all through the video she just keeps walking through some alley, staring deadpan in to the camera and spouting out the lyrics, whatever they might be, thats immaterial. As she walks she gets attacked by I assume a home less guy who hops on her back maybe trying to subdue her (just my take on the situation) she amazingly keeps walking with him on her back until he lets up and falls off at some point, then comes the rain of sparks of electricity and she unwaveringly keeps walking and talking brazen, bland expression intact.
I keep on watching this video over and over everyday during my cardiac session and it impresses me a little more each time. Her state of mind shows resignation and acceptance of the fact that life just is, so what? Do you want to stop each time circumstances or no good influences try to slow you down or turmoil wreaks havoc in your path? No I think not, plow on, don't give anybody the satisfaction of having affected you negatively, they are simply not worth it. You have to keep going, this alley may be dark I can only hope for a bright, sunny, open field at the other end and hope I will find it there. Interpretations of situations and speculations of outcomes mean nothing, I must keep walking and fast to reach there where I gotta be.
Ultimately life happens the way it does because life just is.

Forever and for Always

They cannot be tamed
My thoughts are my empire
My wild streak, my territory

Stories that play out one moment at a time
From the lost, past history
They cannot be owned
they are mine to keep
To torture me

Abandonment I feel so freely
Unlocked and Unashamed
I earned it one hurt at a time
Its all mine too
To always remind me of joys I shall never ever take for granted

My weird odd prayers to no Deity at all
Are my worship to my being
To have survived unseen wars
Dealt to me by fate, when I was oh so young
so very very young
They are for me alone
and no one else

Some random waking moment when I'm suddenly seized by fears unknown
Each time I realize it doesn't happen any more
That tragedy ended a long time ago
That thrill at having lived it through for better or for worse
That reward is worth dying as I did
Its my victory bell to ring for ever and for always.

Stealing a little something from someone

I read this one blog by a female and it takes me wherever she goes. Its like having a non fiction series and knowing that the protagonist does really really exists at this very moment, at least I hope so. This is only the kind of non fiction I have been reading last few months. I follow a few others but this one is the most proliferate and this female really has to write you can feel the urge as strong as wanting to throw up that too projectile style. I know thats gross but thats the type of emotions I'm talking about. I have read this before somewhere...that you are a writer only when you just need to write. You cant really stop and you don't do it for all the success you dream about. The writing is the result by itself and destiny unto itself.
Writing is such a stunning form of expression that someone light years away from me otherwise can convey feelings so close to my own. A lesbian, native of Alaska and a freight train hopping self proclaimed hobo her and me a straight sheltered female from a smothering Indian background a fairly recent immigrant in US.
This is why it feels like stealing something from someone, the whole nuance of her words they describe everything she felt in that moment. I adore that ability a few of us have by which we can transform the mundane into pure magic. It feels like stealing those emotions and sensations she had then and righteously so. As a writer she puts all her secrets out there for us to steal them and enjoy that guilty pleasure.
Someday, yes someday I might lay it all down like them, the great people that can honestly display all their hurts and joys in form of words that glitter like diamonds and gold in a jewelery case of metaphors and phrases.
Then others can steal what they want, what they can and use it as they wish....

Hot Tears on a Starry Night

I felt like it so I walked out
Late in the night out on the grass
I don't know about the moon
but the sky was filled with starry light

I was thinking hard
I don't know why
Of nights passed and other starry nights

I remembered then a tiny girl
who looked at the sky and the moon and the clouds
she knew not why the world was so
tilted at angles and hard to decipher
she was supposed to be warm
she was supposed to be safe
she was supposed to be loved
She knew all of it then

With my feet touching the moist grass
I thought of a tiny boy
who trusted me so
I remembered his eyes, the tears he never shed
I remember holding his hand
As best I could, as best as I knew then
I remember telling him stories about stars
of a world far away in a distant land

I see them both trying to help each other
him clutching hard to that pillow of his
her not knowing how to do it all
Most of the time she didn't know if she was coming or going

I remember them both like it was yesterday
That memory will never fade away

I don't cry for many things anymore
but if I ever do....
I might
shed some hot tears for those two on a starry night

Rainy Days

Its been a long long time since I have been to Mumbai. The city I called home for the first 22 years of my life. I gaze back and try to think hard what it was like, I mean the crux of it all, but all I remember is the daily, the routine the unbroken hum of activity and the rain, oh God yes the rain.
I watch movies, yeah the Hindi ones about Mumbai and they always portray how its heartless but people almost always band together and overcome whatever it is that is evil, may it be a huge scam, terrorism or any other ailing human social situation and if they cannot overcome it they at least have the dignity to die trying. And just to set the tone of this rambling lets get one thing straight, I have no such insights. Maybe some see it that way (big city, people as one etc.), my perception of the time I was a part of Mumbai is very singular, just me and all the rest as in people, weather, circumstances a huge part of the scenery. I'm not even saying there is no kindness and faith, all I'm saying is thats not what this post is about.
Mumbai for me set that tone, the city always threatened to swallow me whole and all I did was walk with my eyes straight ahead and accept what everything was and decipher the beauty as I went, from the whole scenery that was Mumbai.
By walking I mean the actual walk, I walked most of the time. Sometimes to reach destinations but mostly just for the sake of walking. I walked the city in the scorching May summers, the mild December winters and the season that is really the defining feature of Mumbai, the monsoons. I walked in the traffic, through the exhaust fumes, around the puddles and by the dusky sea shore. It was all about walking and thinking. I have also walked through the slums and today I wonder how I was never assaulted or killed, maybe I really was invisible the way I felt most of the time in the big sea of people in Mumbai.
I used to take the train from the suburb I lived in to go to Mumbai downtown and it was not work related so I could avoid the "crush" hours. I went to the British Council Library for reading and browsing and once done with that I just strolled the streets till it was time to catch the bus back home. This whole journey took on new meanings when done during the monsoons.
I thought just thinking about it would make me write volumes but now it seems like its so deep inside me and so delicate I can only feel it in the middle of my chest, very near my heart. The moist emotion of walking in the rain in Mumbai. The hazy misty dusks and dark gray early mornings with clouds so heavy with moisture and promises of downpours that they looked sagged down upon the city making it look cozy and where this sky met the sea it looked like a wet canvas that had no dimensions a place where a being could cross over into something surreal.
I have been away from Mumbai and its with mixed emotions I think of a lot of things this place represents, but one thing that I have unequivocal feelings about is the rain, and its all good.
Rain in Mumbai is a downpour calling it a shower is an understatement. Its not just a weather condition or a season, in my mind its a place. A place where I was a child one moment and then a teenager and finally a young woman of 22 when I bid it goodbye. Its a place where I carried the heavy heart that only a teenager can boast about, I shed unimportant tears that meant so much then in that place called rain. I fell in love and fell out of love with the heart wrenching and short lived fantasies that only youth supplies. And now in my heart I get to carry forever the bruise of all the rains I lived through in Mumbai. Every new place I have lived in since, countries and oceans apart, when it rains I'm back in that place called rain in Mumbai and my bruise hurts with bittersweet pain of youth that I hope and pray will never go away.