The girl with the clock tattoo in the vanguard

                             Again there it was that incessant nagging and tugging inside her head. She thought she can drown out those voices in her head by blaring punk rock in her ears, which did work for a while but her mind got used to it. It started ignoring the lead vocalist’s voice spewing out poetry like it was a dead man’s words! instead of the music she heard voices of different people shouting “failure!”,”loser!”,”fat”, ”worthless”, ”you think someone will fall in love with you?”  “Hate your guts”, “ugly”, “rebel”. The noise kept on amplifying until it defied all laws of physics even astronomy and filled every possible space around her. It was unbearable.

                           She thought if she could break the mirror open this image would fade and she would discover something beyond that plain ugly face and emotionless eyes but she did not succeed! A bloodied fist earned her three therapy sessions and constant vigilance from her parents. She heard people around repeatedly mention “open your heart” till they have exhausted that phrase from their reservoir! They would chant it like they know a thing about the heart. She told them “I don’t believe in the heart” they sighed giving up “maybe you are heartless” they said and left.

                            The girl in dark blue shirt and torn up jeans with a reluctant expression knew more about the heart than any of those old geysers! A heart is only worth it if is free to follow what makes it dance! If she let her heart lose, she knew it would be trouble, she knew it would return torn down to shreds. So she hid it in her darkest corner and sealed it never to be opened again. Like runes that will protect her seal, she inked herself. he first tattoo was an antique clock, she told herself “everything lasted only for a while” she screamed at her parents “quit your whining it’s just a tat” when they asked why their little had inked herself. She stayed up the whole night crying tearless, noiseless into her pillow for hurting the only two souls which cared. But she was heartless, wasn’t she?  She went on with drawing runes on her; she thought the sixth one sealed it forever.

                              It sealed her heart tight but the mind kept in ragging! Those names she was called, those sneers she pretended to ignored and those sweet words of pity which actually meant “sorry for being such a loser you ugly piece of junk pile” she learned to live with these voices screaming inside. She learned to laugh at herself. Her mind would blame every possible calamity on her inability to hold sanity! No, there is no fairy god mother; there is never a happy ending. We fight our demons till the day we decide to give up and surrender!

                              The girl in a peach shirt and a white jean adorned with tattoos, faking a smile and sporting a red streak in her hair with rock music screaming ”if I told what I was would you turn your back on me?” fought her demons standing in the vanguard.

                              She thought as she stepped into her new classroom during her freshmen year in college, a living example of vivacious purgatory, “it is not in never having demons, it is in fighting them. I’m inclusive of my demons I’m darkness and the light! I’m those insults that were thrown at me I’m the person who proved it doesn’t matter I will find a million reason s to stop and break but then I eye my antique clock which stands still on my arm, for a second all the battles feel like a step towards winning the war. Yes, the hurt was real, they did break my insides and scar my existence but I’m beyond my scars, I’m everything the world is afraid to hold and nothing like what you see in your picture books. I’m the words that will burn your mind when you perceive it. I’m the fall through infinity!”  She smiled and took her position in the vanguard another battle, another scar!           

                                               

The Assembly Line

                                          Everyone is an automaton here. The thing called dream is prohibited and individuality is compromised. They have a pattern, a schema and a prehistoric idea according to which they design their views. They created an assembly line to make the lifeless machines to implement their views. It starts from the very beginning they slowly start with the visualization of their plan in the eyes of the preliminary product; it’s a small seed that is planted. The prototypes can think and can dream but it is the reflection of the makers. Then the assembly line moves on the product is tested, evaluated, graded and judged and in the process questioned for uniformity when it was born for individuality. They singe the product, scar its ends, scrounge the last inch of pride and integrity from it and drain the colour from it. The products oblige for in the name of loyalty to the maker the product stands mum as it is chiseled and its soul removed. It takes hit after hit it loses sight of what it really is of what it really loves it knows not love anymore! They let no light in it, gets so dark. There are rebels, there products which fail to oblige but it is in the nature of the maker to destroy the infectious stray. So, at the end when it is scrutinized and compared to their planned patent it is thrown out as trash as it does not fit in.        

Endangered

ENDANGERED

                    She is the silent sky that smiles at you every time you chance to look up. The sky is eternal but its nature sways with tenderness and sometimes like a storm. She is all the distances between the familiar and the unknown. She smiles like the day hides the night inside. She sighs at the moon and shuns the sun. She is all the songs that hang in the air unsung. She walks unknown, unseen stringing together souls like pearls from another world. She sees all colour and seeps in with the light like the dark.

                    She is everything you find yourself at lose of words for, she laughs with the streams that flow your heartwards. She is the pain that hurts heaven-like. Words spill on her paper like the rain in the monsoon. Everywhere you lose your trail she stretches her hand to you asking to get lost with her. She sees colour in everyone, that quivering green in the heart of the unknown. That heartbreaking blue which drenches you head to toe, that flaming orange which sometimes catches you off guard. The crimson which blazes the night catches your soul and drags it out without caution. The yellow that sings familiar songs in your ears. She says she sees monochrome in the mirror and the wind tugs at her to call her liar!

                    In her all those little secrets that you want to uncover. With her all those little lies that you want lay your lips on. The quivering electricity that rips your heart out. She is the thunder to that electricity she burns through your existence. She is questions that are left unanswered, she smiles knowingly. She plays charades with your heart, you ask for hers as yours lays breaking at her sight. She just says”give me love”.  You obey you fly across the skies to hang your heart at her door steps. But where is her heart? Where is the wild heart that sets fire to all the pauses mid-sentence?  Where is the heart that makes the distance between your mind and your heart stretch miles?  You stare into the eyes for answers because you are a fool for things that kill you! The minute you meet her eyes you see a thousand road maps, you smile silently! This heart that shakes your world, this heart that knows no justice! This heart, your chance at sanity! You leave it at her will because you don’t see many that are dark and scintillating at the same time, you don’t see many that are as untainted as hers! You don’t see many that make you speechless like hers! You don’t see many that are as endangered as hers. You leave with a kiss to the wind. She becomes the relentless moon in your night and steals your sleep like she knows your intention.           

THE SKY BURNS BLUE

To be able to look at your smile
And not feel the frozen fire coursing through my veins
Is impossible…
The unparalleled feeling of non-existence,
Like the world has stopped the second you enter a room
And everyone in the room has ceased to exist
It’s you in the spotlight of the sun and my soul that drinks
In your presence.
Every time I inch close to you
My inner demon smiles…
Thinking it has found a place to harbor.
I silence my demons as you never get close enough
To sense my darkness.


A simple touch of thought ignites the mind into flames. 
The thought ignites;
The touch will destroy everything in its path,
It takes no prisoners.
Slowly melancholy fills the space and leaves nothing
To trace.
From the rooftops they scream
“Irrationality”,
“Impossibility”,
“Hurt is what will remain”
It is not without this knowledge did I fall
Into your complexity.
So I stand there
Smiling at their ignorance…


All the music in the world
Fails to help me survive.
There is but one sound I want to hear.
It is the sound of your dreams,
Inching closer to mine.
They say it takes courage
To dedicate your conscience to a person.
 No, it is not an act of courage!
Showing your naked heart
To the person who has tempted your senses, well…
That takes courage!


Everything that has captured my attention stands mum.
The swirling winds will be your glances towards me
That escaped in the air and hit my being
Like the words hit the mind!
 I stand clearly at the edge of insanity!
I stand waiting at the edge to fall into your arms,
To escape into your dreams!


 Every second of longing that is impossible to string into words!
Every instance of proximity that is inhumanely irresistible!
 Every chance of clarity that I have chosen to ignore!
 Every moment of those macabre crooked smiles that I treasure will come back to kill me
When I am alone.  
Yet I choose to fall into this chasm.


The way you make me believe in myths
I condemned once
Is the way the wind sways and rocks the ship,
Slowly and unknowingly
Pulling the ship to its will.
 When the wind plays innocent, the ship just smiles.
When the moment arrives,
When I can no longer hold your thought
Where will this tenuous memory subside to?
 Will the object of relentless desire be bestowed upon?
As a thing of the past?
 Will I fade from your books?
 Questions are best answered by time.
 But I have got one that can be answered by you,
If I fall head first at your smile…......
Will you catch me in your dreams?
                                                                                                                              Indu

THE DRIVER SEAT OVER SHOTGUN !!

           Outrage across the nation, voices blaring from microphones! Voices, they are just voices! What good are the voices when the ears they fall on are deaf? Injustice, inhumanity these are the names given to deeds performed against women these days.  Names, what good are names when it is not tackled? The women of our country can only be called contrasting because even among women there are differences of opinion of how they should be treated. While there are feminist ladies down in the streets screaming for their so called freedom there are women inside their kitchens making rotis for their husbands, calling this entire riot futile. So it is known for a fact that the empowerment of women should begin with the creation of a unanimous idea of revolution. The revolution can only be meaningful only when goal is actually equality.

               Opening car doors for us, elegantly letting us by with a much used phrase “ladies first” may account for gallantry but what the women today are looking for is not gallantry but equality! The abundance women centric hate songs we find these days in the films are just downright disturbing. the women of today sometimes do pass this on as a joke maybe it should be handled as a joke maybe it needs attention the answer to this is in the minds of the writer who writes with the thought that blaming an entire gender would compromise for his loss. Women should be given equal stature in all their walks of life. Their choices respected their perspectives appreciated if correct, corrected if flawed. Women do not need a knight in a shining armor anymore they can fight their own battles. We see countless number of working silently running their family from the background and yet the male member will be crowned the main bread winner of the family, a dashing injustice that one.

          If the empowerment women should be rightly brought about it should start from the women themselves. They must understand and experience the true sense of freedom. Freedom in the sense taking a deserted road home without having a fear of getting molested, of being treated like scum, like someone weaker. When it stops being a true bliss to return home safely, when the superior (a lady mind that) can give out orders to her colleagues without being branded as a boss-lady, when the door opening and clearing of paths are done due to a sense of respect, when the wolf whistles, women hater anthems stop, when the extreme feminism, the race to superiority is put to a rest, when women drivers are not branded to be professional killers the women race will stand enlightened, empowered and undauntingly liberated !