Posting on this space is shelved for until I regain faith in my writing.

Falling words

words were caught up

in the almost pauses
in between the falling raindrops

i try to trap those silences
against the noise
the rain makes.

August

it is august again when it rains like this. swift and lyrical. dramatic in how it creates two different strains of music when it falls on the garden and on the backyard.

it is august again when i sit up another night, wading through words in my gmail, yahoo and a stack of old poems on an abandoned blog.

it is august again when i look for you in words, in wasted moments when you stood by the carpark, waiting.

it is august again when i walk back on our sidewalks, stand in the carpark while the drizzle falls races on my face through the fragmented sky, cut by the tall twin buildings.

it is august again, when i decide to leave pages in my diary blank a whole month because you've run out of things to say.

on sunday mornings,

the week comes full circle.

i'm at my desk again, as early as 5 am. my colleague's media player plays loud, songs i know by heart now, but can't place.

my coffee is too sweet today. only on sunday mornings, i drink sweet black coffee. (on other days, it's just bitter, in your memory) i let the sweet and the bitter mix at the bottom of the mug, as i form four quick concentric circles with the mug in the air. the mixture swirls at the bottom, the aroma rising to touch my nostrils with what i know will be a wake-up call to my sleepy sunday morning.

something about these mornings never change- the music, the slight gush of adrenalin over headlines, the coffee mug on the side of the computer screen, the morning newspapers, and the cell phone. something about sundays never change- my only guarantee of permanence.

end of a week

amid the sound of the crickets, the croaking of toads and the last drops of rainwater falling off the shingles, you also hear the singing of a shrill female voice. you know it is bollywood playback singing but can't place the voice. must be out of a hindi movie set in the most dramatic of sequences, you think.

the afternoon passes like it was waiting to be slapped aside quickly. you picked up Murakami and it was over.

when you got up, it felt like you'd lost your sense of time.

it is dark, the rain has stopped and Norwegian Wood lies against your stomach, your pink frames perched on it.

Kanchu sleeps on the floor.

saturday afternoons used to be different. they began slowly and stretched like the love-making that happened every afternoon in repeated cycles behind the unpainted door. when the cycles ended, the door suddenly opened into a dulling evening, striking your face with a sudden realization that another listless week had gone by.

you pick your things off the floor of your bedroom, spread things on the kitchen table to chop and prepare for another week. another week. you know it will bring back the painful back, the damp heart and the stretching of your soul. nevertheless, you start cooking.

just because

just because

i refuse
to
believe
that
we
do not
exist

you call me angry.

ennui

a morning is spent sitting at the deck on the veranda, my laptop propped on my thighs and Kanchu sitting by my feet, watching the pigeons.
she watches them in silence and then suddenly springs to her feet, pouncing as though they were within reach. the pigeons fly away and Kanchu sits down again by my feet.
i scan the onlines for stories. nothing interesting happening today. i'm tired of political haranguing.
mamu talks to kalpana didi about something she read in the newspaper. a woman thrashed by villagers accusing her of witchcraft. Tsch! Tsch! they keep talking.
i'm sitting there listlessly, looking up at the sky as it prepares to rain in a corner of Kathmandu.
something comes back to me in fragments of a dream i had last night. you were in it.

Buses and trains

It looks like it will rain hard today, said Prachinta to herself as she looked up at the gray sky.

There were photos in her mail-box that morning, of a face strewn with innocence.

He'd sent her photos of his little one sitting in a stroller, trying to imitate his father in thick glasses and one of just staring at the camera lens.

The little boy's face had a faint trace of the him she had known in school.

There were no words in that correspondence. Just images. And they made way for a brief mental journey to a walk on the banks of river Cam, where they had stopped to look at their favourite tree in silence, holding back the surge of emotions that had been filling their hearts, the moment they started on a walk on the stone-paved sidewalks of Cambridge that day.

The walk had been about the chill that touched them, more than what tugged at their hearts.

All unsaid and undone, they parted ways at the station. The warmth of the passengers in train embraced her, instead of the Cambridge air. For just a moment then, she had longed for his hands and then turned her face toward the Cambridge grasslands the train was fast traversing.

Now, Prachinta looked at the thick patches of cloud rise above the airport and said a little thank you for the rain.

She knew rain was creating havoc in Pakistan and wondered why what could breed love, was also attached to destruction, death and ruin.

Nothing is permanent, she thought.

by the by

this isn't one of my favourite mornings.
this isn't how i want my morning to begin. i don't need to be thinking about the tangled politics and wonder how i can fit my words correctly to make sense out of the chaos Nepali politicians are deft at creating. i don't want to wake up to newspapers filled with news about "political impasse" on their front pages while the more important deaths, sufferings get buried in the non-significant columns.
i don't want to wake up to these slow-moving, gloomy mornings of editing and re-writing political stories.
i'd rather read blog posts by people who live their lives with the honesty of being self-centered and not feigning philanthropy. i'd rather wake up to emails from people i haven't forgotten, who remind me that in my not forgetting, i'm still alive.

August and everything after

i don't know what to write any more. from august to august, my blog comes a full circle. from one monsoon to another, this new identity has survived, unlike the one on wordpress. i don't know if it's just that this was easier to handle and that wasn't. i don't know if it was because i became obsessed with the need to record and record and record in the bygone year, lest i should forget what i was like when the rain of 2009 was on and how it sowed the seeds of transformation in me. and yet, i don't know what to write anymore. i can't turn to the rain for inspiration anymore. i'm only losing my way through the night when i sit-up and listen to this pitter-patter.
and right now, i ask myself if writing has made sense at all. if August, and everything after will ever make sense for anyone but me. and if it's at all possible to live every year, waiting for it to be August so that the peak of monsoon, when it washes out rural homes, sweeps down roads and carries people away will still bring you back to me.

any day

it's been a while since i heard the rain. now, am not sure why i haven't heard it in all these months, when i've seen concrete and iron bars come down in landslips, and typed the names of a hundred people who got swept away by flash floods, buried under mudslides or carried away by swelling rivers. how could i not have heard the rain all these months?
but i hear it now, as though it starts a music for me alone, as i prepare to record more deaths, tears, conspiracies, victory and defeat.
just another day at work.

Conversations

you have become
the drafts in my inbox-
written and never sent.

you have become the pauses
during conversations
with my favourite girlfriends-
a secret song.

you have become
the sweetest,strongest
last gulp at the bottom
of my coffee mug-
almost done.

I found you hinged on the conversation that flowed out of the new me I've become, during a conversation with my favourite girl writers. I'm a new me. Happy, swift and flirtatious.

My shoulders remained slouched as they laughed at how embarrassed girls are about the first traces of breasts and how there's a desperate need to feel like one of the boys. I laughed at the tip I was offered for my femininity. But in my mind, you propped on our talks as though you had been there listening to the girl talks and becoming a part of the words our minds formed, becoming a girl yourself.

I looked on in amazement as P and S said "kapalnai ta ho". It's only hair. You can chop it off at a barber's. They do a great job.

They reminded me of Parijat's Sukumbari.I filled with envy at their comfort with their own bodies. It reminded me of the time I'd drawn my legs to my chest in an attempt to hide myself from you, bundling me up in a ball, shutting out what might have been the desire for your fingers and their poetry.

I fell in love with S's eyes that distanced itself into a pool once in a while, during the conversation. I fell in love all over again with P's big curls. I fell in love with M's little note stashed in a black pouch.

With you hinged to the conversations, I fell in love with my favourite girl writers all over again.



there will always be drafts in my inbox, written with someone in mind and never sent.