Escape Artist

I am an escape artist

Just call me the Queen of 'De-Nile'

I slither through the reality like a wisp of smoke before the fire

Autumn days like now and here

Pressed tight to my being

Numerous rainy days persevered

Many years lived and learnt

Forgetting is an art

Remembering is a skill

I exist between both of those

Where fantasy unravels her wings

So here we go again, I remember a day a long long time ago. It was an evening and I was on the beach. Walking through tiny rivulets at the very edge where waves would just touch and go.

I was with a friend. Both of us teenaged girls full of dreams. We talked and talked about random things. Just imagining what the future would be like, being so scared of the unknown, but excited even more by it.

Do you remember dear friend the time we spent being crazy together. The way we rebelled and dared and defied boundaries together.

I still can remember the smell of the cigarettes you smoked, and I tried too but I never could. I never really swallowed the smoke and exhaled it too soon. I remember your false bravado. The desperation to finish the pack before you went home. You never became a smoker, so what the hell was that all about. I know it now, it was rebellion, to break free of the ties that hold a girl back from being a girl.

I remember being girls. How vulnerable we were. Do you sometimes look back and ache for what was, do you hold it in your memory like the inheritence of youth, the privelege we shared.

Do you remember getting drunk on gin and laughing till we thought our jaws would freeze that way. Where are you dear friend, I talk to your shell from time to time, but the pearl within is gone. Is this what grown up you is now?

So when do you laugh because it feels like it

When do you make up silly stories about things that might be.

You scare me now, I am starting to feel you never really existed, that I made you up..like everything else I did at the time.

Or is true and I can flatter myself, that I made you be like that because I reflected in you....whatever it is I miss you....girlfriend..

Mumbai Saga

I went to Mumbai after ages, may be I let too much time slip away, between then and
now. But I felt the disconnect very harshly. My mind and eyes kept searching for spaces that did not exist anymore. Every corner I took I expected to see something that wasnt there anymore. But then again whatever I was looking for was it ever there, or even back then it was just an 'impossible imagined'.

Where there was angry red

I saw incredible hues of copper

Where there were hard edges I saw shimmery crystalline lines

I saw beauty because I felt it

I was young, I was naive

But I still regret nothing

For then I was capable of imagining the impossible...

Now its a heap, a dusty heap of unwashed remains, of stories told over and over, of afternoons that scorch and nights not cool enough.

Over crowded than my most wildest imagination, there are no corners to hide in, no spaces to dissolve your thoughts into. Its walls upon walls of breathing human flesh, striving to survive.

Then again, places and faces change all the time, based on our own perceptions.

So when I walked those streets again I tried to be who I was..

A long ago girl with wide brown eyes

Wild crazy streak that frightened herself too

a song that went nowhere, nowhere near the truth

A long ago girl with syrupy dreams of dew

Hazy lonely afternoons and wasted summer nights

A long ago girl searching for divine
Walking on the streets and reaching for the stars

Her thoughts like tumbleweed made of leaves and grass and straw

A long ago girl, long since forgotten

Like the city that swallowed her whole

A long ago want, a long ago need, a long ago taste of the salty bitter sweet..

Spinner of golden silk yarns

Tell me a story in your honeyed voice
Let it wash over me, one word at a time.
In your rumbling tone.

Tell it like, you mean it.
Every emotion intact.
Make it flow into sentences that will wrap my being, around your little finger.

Make words out of feelings, make them golden with your voice
Tell me a story never ever told before.
When dawn of the world was crispy fresh, when you and I were never there
You heard it from a wise old man, a story that changed you forever since then

Describe her laughter, that girl you loved, tell me exactly how she looked at you when she hurt
Tell me then how you said goodbye to the best thing that had ever happened to you
Tell me then, give me the reason why you had to leave to conquer the world not the one out there but the one you hid within

Tell me a tale that doesnt even pretend to explain it all
Tell me the tale thats a journey in itself, where destination is a mirage to begin with, its the story thats important, it holds you, it moulds you its designs your faith

Tell me that story in your drunken barritone
make me shiver from the anticipation
Shatter every myth I ever held about love, life and beyond
tell me your story with your eyes half closed, your lips moving like an angels
Make me unlearn what I have learnt before this story you tell me now
It never really mattered the yesterdays before today that are long since gone

Tell it to me over and over, let it wash over me
like a high tide of sequences in other peoples lives
episodes of scenes palyed out like intricate filigree

I love your stories you story teller you
I love the decadence in your simple truths
all it takes to make me feel,
feel like a human thats lived for centuries atleast,
like a half burnt firewood waiting for rekindling
Its your story of infinite stories,braided together in your wistful gaze as if you see it happening all over again.