Bereft

The glow of your heart shines

A fear I henceforth know,

A pain serenely massive,

A tear of silent flow.

An illusion of my sacred heart

A blunder sarcastically undone.

Stares evade, tears still silent,

Only hollowness howls.

Beyond mountains of scary ridges

And pale fright of deathly woes,

My fingers trembleLooking for you,

When in choked breaths I know

There hasn’t been a breath of you.

I have lived through the speechless nights

Tapping on my window,

Silent, melancholy, humming on it own,

When I was but looking at the moon.

I have mumbled, fumblingly so,

But only memories clawed.

I love you not in fear,

Not in soothing sunshine;

I love you like the ridges in my heart

Scary, tired, yet solemnly divine.

The Masked Man

“You better stay away from me! No, no…no…don’t come near me!” Mathilda shouted. The man in black suit was approaching her steadily. His face was covered in a dark mask, only eyes of coal pierced her heart and made her go numb. On one hand he held his knife, blood dripping from it. In front of her lay the lifeless, mutilated body of her mother.

It was a sweet afternoon when Matty and her mom came to the store. They had relocated to a new place after her parents’ divorce. Matty was naturally upset about it. Her mother, the strong lady that she was, would not let her be sad. She brought her to the store, bought her the frocks she wanted and a case full of chocolates. Matty wanted a book. The quiet girl she was, she preferred books to her toys.

“Mom, will you buy me the new book from the Horror in Castles series?”

Her mom did not like her reading horror books. Mathilda knew that.

“Sweetie, are you sure that’s the kind of book you want to read? Why not go for some other story, instead? You know...like...”

“No mom. Please, I’m not a baby anymore. I sleep alone now. I can handle horror! Mom, please. I promise I’ll do all my homework. And I will keep my room clean as well. Please, mom!”

“Okay, okay…just this once.”

“Alrighty!” A smile lit up her pallid face.

It was then that Mathilda saw the man. The masked man. She could not see his face except for his eyes, and the eyes had something that she never saw in people before. Yes, he was more menacing than all the horror books she read. Much more horrible. And he held this huge knife in his hand. He was moving towards them, his eyes fixed on the mother and the girl.

“Mom! Mom, look!” She pulled her mother’s dress.

Her mom turned and saw the man. Her eyes widened in fear. Her mouth fell. Trembling, she said, “What in God’s name…what do you think mister you are doing? Scaring little girls in a grocery store? Please, find some other ways to promote your horror flicks! Matty, come along. Let’s go. We are not buying any books here.”

Matty held her mom’s fingers hard as her mother dragged her away. Matty dare not peep back at the man. And the she heard her mother’s groan.

The monster had pierced his knife from the back!

Her mother fell with a thump. Shocked and scared, Matty ran. The monster followed.

Her back now touched he wall. “Don’t come near me, please. Please! No!” she cried.

***********

The doctor held her hands tightly. Mathilda hit his face with her fist. The new nurse rushed and held her hands. The doctor pushed the needle in her arm with subtle precision. Slowly, Mathida fell asleep.

“What is wrong with her, doctor?” asked the new nurse. Her attractive ebony face did not match the thick tone of her voice.

“Her mom got killed by some psycho in a store when she was six. She was with her. She still lives that black day till date. Her brain hasn’t grown ever since the accident. Would cry out thinking we are the man with the knife when we inject the needles. Really sad case!”

The doctor went away to attend the next patient.

The nurse muttered, “An accident, or an act of Fate? The one that awaits her too, lurking in the dark?” Her eyes shone as she looked at the sleeping, disheveled Mathilda.

When night came in the mental hospital, the nurse said to Mathilda, “Come dear, this is not the place you should be. Come, for I shall free you from this asylum.”

She held her hands and brought her out of the main entrance. Not a soul had a clue as to what happened to the patient in room two hundred and one.

The next day, Mathilda was found dead in the local grocery store, a knife across her heart. 

Aftermath of Love

A sneak-peek into a girl's heart...

Dear R...

I know there’s no point in writing this letter. All writing is meant for being read. Without a reader a writer can not be. Again, having a reader is one thing, and having a particular reader is a different thing altogether.

This letter is meant for you, and well, you will never read it. And it does not matter who else reads it, because it is only you who I want to show the emptiness brewing within me. Yes, I had promised myself I will not think of you again, and yes, all my tarot card readings pointed fingers at a future and relaxing my claws from the past.

I was just wondering, when do you think it is finally over and make up your heart to move on? Because every time I was angry about something you said, I was bitter…but eventually it would subside. I would dig into the memories of your smiling face, the life in the lines of your face, the distinct rhythm of your voice, that accent. Everything just enveloped me in an intense feeling of comfort, and little by little kissed away my anger, replacing it with a burning want to hold you, to talk to you or maybe just place my ear on your chest and hear your calm heartbeat.

I don’t like you angry, I never did. I was scared to think any shade of purple on your fair face. It wrecked my heart to think you were staring at me, hatred gorging from your eyes. You have a very beautiful smile. And a very jolly face that holds it in place. Why do you get angry? Why do you make that frown, why do you let clouds hover on your face? There! I am dreaming of you again, and I have lost the right to do so.

Hmm…I close my eyes, hoping to see something beyond your face, maybe the face of the child I saw from my balcony today. She was a dear…in the way she was smothering her mom with her babyish questions! Oh! It was so you! Remember how you’d eat my head with all those sick questions of yours! Geez! You tired the hell out of me…

Why don’t you tire me like that anymore? What did I do wrong?

Okay, enough of this weakling-duckling behavior. You are my past, and I have buried you with the rose-petals in my diary. I have deleted every email you have sent me, and every chat conversation that we have had. And I deleted every comment I made anywhere on any of your profile. I have deleted my facebook account (though I wouldn’t have the heart to do that if you had not unfriended/blocked me). I just wonder, you are so determined, aren’t you? I must have deleted your number at least a hundred times tired of waiting for smses that came scarcer than rain in winter before I added you all over again. I have blocked you on my cell, from my messages, and kept checking the screened messages to see if at all you had sent anything. How could you not? After all the intimacy, after saying how close we had come, how could you go about doing every little thing of your day-to-day life without bothering to think about me once? Do you really not miss me? Am I the only fool that keeps turning over the little things you said over every silly topic ever possible?

Why I can’t I forget you? Why can’t I just think you are dead when you are so cold about me? I remember when you would hurt me and then say sorry, I was so ready to accept you back, no matter how much you humiliated me. Wish I were harsher during those times. But just thought maybe you were already hurting, I shouldn’t hurt you anymore. Or maybe, I was plain scared of losing you.

Yes, losing you. But how does someone lose something which was never hers? Just that I never realized it when I were with you. You were always so warm that I couldn’t realize that if need be you could be so uncaring. How do people end everything in seconds, never to look back again? Honestly, I worship you for how indifferent you are. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t resolve again and again to forget you and move on. That I can not keep my resolve is a different thing altogether. That I am still wetting my dumb pillow with salty tears is different matter altogether. Pillows are so much more understanding than men! They may not talk, but they always offer a shoulder to cry.

Sometimes I think maybe it is best not to feel anything at all. And it was you who had taught me to feel things!

I can not hate you, that’s for sure. Hating you makes me miserable. Unfortunately forgetting you does not work either. How do people keep up with the dredging of real life when there’s a pyre alive in your heart every moment? How does anyone continue to live when they are already dead? How does one go about being happy when there’s eternal gloom casting a shadow over their heart forever?

How do people deal with the aftermath of Love?

Yours forever

P..

Rhapsody on the bygone days

All the pleasant memories, as the year ends,

Take refuge in debris.

Connections that were made

Faltered the test of time and withered away.

Copious tears shed on paltry feelings,

Have dried on forlorn cheeks.

And yet, as the bitter teeth of Winter recedes

And a glorious Sun rises,

I shall, in the maze of its halo, dream again.

I’ll stare as far as my sight lends,

Into the garden of roses in some faraway place,

Where the first glitter of the Sun dries

The nip of shimmering dews.

I shall fold my hands across my breast

And bury the memories that I made

And feel happy for all that I have.

And those that have left me along the way

I will for once forgive them,

As a sigh heaves out of my heart

(For wounds take a long time to heal)

Yet, I shall pass by the dark shadows

And not let your memories ruin my today

Though I know,

Some things are never to be forgotten

And some scars are to be kept alive.

Though I know

I’ll remember you once again and sob

But not today;

And for once lose myself in the laughter of Life.

And in ale I drown peels of my pain...

                                                                                 Image courtesy: http://www.traderscity.com

And peels of my feelings shed,

Peels of my flesh

Peels of my mind.

A stream of gushing feelings

Streaming like rain

Stream of pain

And peels of my pain

Scatter in a gale

And grow pale

And drown in good ol’ ale.

The Writer and the Rose

   (To someone who never cared)

He was a man of ingenious words. She was a shy, delicate rose. She was filled with an impregnable admiration for all that was beautiful and brilliant. They were, hence, destined to meet.

Lust was his mistress. He looked at her with purple-tainted glasses and reveled in her beauty. Indeed an intricate marvel of Nature was she – an untainted, impeccable aura of innocence. Red burned in his eyes. His hands he stretched towards her…

She looked at his prosaic fingers, and at the masterpieces that they had penned. Reverence racked fire in her heart, her petals quivered in strange shyness.

He smiled, and his eyes changed their red, turning to a warmer brown of trust. She fell.

Once she was in his hands, he ran his fingers through her, each touch sending chills through her body. He clicked his tongue at the sheer softness and exquisiteness of her being. Saliva glistened on his tip and ran down her velvet body. She surmised it as Love. And she held him fast, her body gripping him with all the strength of her delicate structure, her thorns piercing his tough, hairy skin. Lust raged in his eyes, and red stretched its serpentine claws. He probed at her with the look of a victor. He held her tighter and one by one, shredded her petals.

 It was a blue, misty, moonless night when she woke. There was no her anymore, just a multitude of petals spread across the bed. A zephyr blew the petals off and buried them in the breast of an old diary. Cruelty had shorn her off her innocence, and blood made her redder than wine. She breathed fast; as the Angel of Death overcast his cold shadow over her… she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer:

                                                                                   And my love was but true

                                                                               My trust warmer than my being

                                                                                  My soul I had given to thee

                                                                                And henceforth I take it back.

                                                                             Just as I remain buried in my grave

                                                             So shall ye, asphyxiated in the dreary pages of life

                                                                                And memories shall henceforth cry,

                                                                                  And stain the white pages red.

Seven days later sharp, mumbled cries arose from the abode of the writer. The physician examined the life-less body with exactness of modern medical science and declared with a sigh, “Strange case of asphyxia!” However, no one could account for the pool of blood in which the body lay, for not a single scratch was discovered on his cold, hard frame.

If they paid attention, perhaps they could discover the rising vapor of a fading scent of the rose from his comatose finger-nails.

Today we all finished the NSS assignment. As part of the WBUT curriculum, we had been working under an organization called Prayasam for ur National Social Services programme. It had started with the survey we all had to do in different blocks in Salt Lake. The survey form had different services (plumber, electrician, security) in which we had to conduct the survey. The aim was actually to find out services which were not readily available in Salt Lake. Then Prayasam would provide vocational training to the children living in the slum areas in those services so that they can work gainfully in those sectors rather than working as child labour.

The survey was fun with us gaining varied experiences, both sweet and sour. There were cases of doors literally being shut on our faces! When we tried to describe the mission of our survey one of the residents had even commented that she had seen a lot of surveys like these and they are useless. This brings one aspect of the common people in notice, that most people, living in the luxury of their comfortable homes don’t even want to hear the plight of these poor children. How do we then expect to make this a social movement? We believe that the most important step to preventing child labour is to prmote awareness in the general public regarding this. But as seen in most cases, people are hardly wiling to listen.

But incidents like these did not stop us from moving on with our aim, to actually make people listen and help us. In most cases we were received well. All in all, it has been an enjoyable experience.

The second nice thing was the poster making. We gathered in group of ten to make it. Loads of planning, brainstorming and we finally came up with a nice poster to the best of our ability. Hopefully, it will have its impact.

This has been a novel idea of incorporating NSS in our WBUT curriculum. Had it not been for Prayasam, we would not have seen the menace of child labour in such detail. Through the videos that we were shown in the college conference room we saw how beautifully Prayasam has been working with these childen from poorer economic conditions. It is really an aplaudable thing that they are doing. They are touching so many lives through it. And because of them, even we could be a part of this mission of eradicating child labour. Maybe we haven’t ben able to do much, but the awareness that it has created in us is precious. And hopefully, the brochures that we have distributed during our survey session might also have influenced a few people to actually think about this problem of child labour and work against it.

Please check out the Prayasam official website to know more on how beautifully they are working towards the cause of children from economically backward section: Prayasam