Beauty all around...

Nawafar woke up from deep sleep. She was lying on the rocks somewhere near the river bank. She could feel the touch of sun on her face and it felt so warm and comforting to be just lying there without any movement after hours of fighting against the furious torrent of the river that brought her here. She smiled to herself. Her eyelids felt heavy and she did not feel like opening them. Not yet. She always enjoyed playing little games with herself, and this time she wanted to feel her whereabouts through sounds. She could hear the rustling of the leaves in the wind, the birds that were calling each other. One of them sat somewhere near and sang his song to attract other birds. She was amazed that the birds were not afraid of her human presence. They seemed to be aware of her mood and for a moment she thought that they are a part of her own self. Reflections of her own thoughts. The monkeys were playing somewhere at a distance. She always loved their presence, their playfulness and human like appearance.
She opened her eyes...
He was sitting on a rock near by breathing slowly as if in fear that the sound of his breath might frighten her. His deep set eyes were fixed on her and she knew that he recognised her instantly. She also knew that it was him, but she couldn't hide her surprise at discovering that a person sitting opposite was a man and not a young boy. It confused her, as she remembered him as a companion to her childhood games and the thought that he might have been leading life while separated from her never entered her thoughts.


Rajkumari stood confused at the crossing unable to decide which way to turn. All around her were high buildings with advertising banners that screamed of different pleasures of life awaiting you if only you had enough money to spend.
Why feel sorry... said one.
Why feel sorry? Rajkumari thought for a moment, but that moment confused her even more as deep inside she did feel sorry for many things happening around her and within her. She felt sorry for the lonely woman lying on a hospital bed, for the dog standing confused in the middle of the crossroad, for the child who had not seen his parents for the last ten days as they were too busy with their work. And in a way she also felt sorry for herself... She was a third world Rajkumari thrown suddenly into a middle of this speedy city with its beautiful inhabitants who knew so well how to live, while she was confused about life at every step she took.
The people around her were so beautiful with their perfect bodies. The grand master looked at her with contempt the other day as she could not fulfill the requirements of joining the club - he could not find the box to put her into... And was he really a grand master anyways? Somehow his long beard seemed like a marketing gimmick to her, but once again she was nobody to comment on such things as the worshippers of his perfect body were at his feet day and night.
Hey girl... why do you look sulky? somebody shouted from a fast moving car, Come and join us for a fun ride... Why don't you just go to the shop and get yourself a plastic bear to play with?
Rajkumari turned her face the other side. There was a tear in her eyes that she wanted to hide from all those wise and beautiful people who were marching all around her.


Her eyes were fixed on his face and she could not help smiling gently as she was trying to examine every line around his eyes and trying to imagine the histories hidden behind every single one of them. Was he looking at her in the same way?
She could be sitting like this forever... simply looking at the man in front of her and trying to gently strike his thoughts with her smile. She couldn't move, scared that a man in front of her might be just a mirage, a creation of her imagination, but somewhere deep inside she knew that it was not true. She couldn't move, but at the same time all her being wanted to sit close to him, with her head on his shoulder. She wanted to grow up for him and make up to him for every line on his face, for the coarse touch of his hand. She wanted to see him smile and listen to the most subtle changes in his voice in order to know his ever changing moods. That was enough, she did not have the courage to ask for more. She didn't need more... she was happy sitting next to him on a stone looking far away towards the lands that none of them had seen before...

The city of Power

Rajkumari was bored, which seemed a bit strange to her, for apparently intelligent people don't get bored, and she did believe that it was intelligence rather than beauty that was her virtue. Anyways, Rajkumari was bored and something had to be done about it. The elfian creatures were hiding in the forest and Rajkumari decided to give them some time to breathe after the last battle. One should admit that she had a big heart after all since she decided to treat her enemy lightly for a moment... But... oh believe me how bored she was because of that!!!!! She really suffered terrible pangs of boredom and something had to be done about it instantly!
But what can I do? asked Rajkumari the royal tiger, who turned his royal tail at her and marched to the inner chambers of the castle. How rude of him, she thought as she sat down in her magic garden pondering over her problem, which decided to stay with her rather than join the tiger in the chambers...
Rajkumari was bored to death... And since life was rather dear to her she really needed to think of something fast... And then... Abracadabra... the royal dragon came up with an amazing idea - a trip to the other side of the world - straight to the famous New York city!!!!!
How splendid! Rajkumari shouted with joy as she began to get ready for her new adventure. I never dreamt of going to the other side of the world, and now I can really see what it feels like to be in the first world country, the most glorious country of them all...

Welcome to New York city, a big sign shouted at Rajkumari as she descended from her royal dragon. (To tell you the truth Rajkumari walked all her way to the other side of the world, but for the sake of decorum the royal dragon must be included in the story.) How incredible the sign was!!!! So huge and colourful with so many famous names inscribed on it... The eyes of Rajkumari suddenly became moist as she felt very very little in front of that sign.
Soon Rajkumari left the not so interesting suburbs and reached the heart of the city... How tall the buildings were... How finely designed, the geometry of the place was incredible - the street lights above her head and the glass walls of high buildings all around her... The very sight of it made her understand that she was indeed standing in the place where all the power and wealth of the world meet. And to think that the world outside that space was so different - a dog with only three legs whom she patted in the rain, an old woman who asked for food outside the sports ground where the children played, people cooking by the side of the road... None of such things seemed to be present in the minds of beautiful people of the most beautiful city in the world...
Hello, said one of the men who approached her as she was standing in awe of the architecture around her, would you like to sit with me for a minute so that I could discuss my latest marketing theory with you?
I'm sorry, but I don't know much about marketing, Rajkumari mumbled in shame.
Oh, no problem... well... how about some diet coke and diet chips with diet burger with me? It would only take 14 minutes to have them...
Oh, sorry, I'm not hungry, Rajkumari mumbled again as she was getting more confused and embarrassed of her limited knowledge and lack of appetite.
Then what are you doing here? asked the man politely.
Oh, I'm just a tourist - came here to get to know something about the greatest city of the world.
Well... I know a place that you may want to visit here - look over there on the right side you have the President's house, and if you take the first turn you will reach the place of thousand dreams - Broadway!!!!!
Broadway!? Rajkumari couldn't believe her ears, really???? me, a third world Rajkumari can go to Broadway?????? how incredible and exciting that is...

The copy paste world

You who enter, abandon all thought...
There is no need for thinking,
I'll simply cut out the thoughts from an old magazine and stick them to your face.
It will give you a new old personality, full of repetitive ideas that I may try to sell you as your own.
Backspace. Click thrice. It was a mistake.
I'll just click to open the world that you had created before me and I shall take out of it a few words and paste them as my own.

Lets paste a selfie on the front page of knowledge. Poor old knowledge lost its charm and needs to update itself from time to time, isn't it?
So let's click that damn selfie with our plastic smiles and post it for the world to see.
Lets cut out the moon, the fool who doesn't even know that his light is a mere reflection.
Let's google the facts and accuse it of of stealing the sun.
Let's put it on trial and pronounce the death penalty.
Death to the Moon!
Death to the stars!
Death to the parrots for they failed to present themselves above our heads at the usual 6 pm hour.
Death to the colours!
Death to the trees!
Death to the old, who needs them anyways? The relicts of irrelevant past, while all we want is to look towards the future.

Segregation. Neat folders. Applications.
The news reached our ears about the recent creation of the concentration camp for those who do not own an android cell phone.
Lets punish them for inability to catch up with the modern times.
Lets throw them out from amongst our midst, they don't deserve to be here.
Attention! March! Look to the right!
The copy paste world that we created involuntarily.
Flag up! Salute!

Can you please stop it, for I can't take it anymore...

The red button down.

The Master

I am a master of words,
I stitch them together into an invisible net that I would throw at you at the least expected moment.
You shall choke and I'll watch you wriggle in your struggle to breathe,
I won't feel remorse. I don't do it for feelings of any kind.
It is my job. Mind you job, not even my vocation, I simply do it for money.
Good old money that divides me from you.
Good old money that allows me to look at you with contempt.
Who knows, maybe one day I shall decide to throw you the uneaten piece of meat that I kept on my table.
Enjoy. Savour it till the last drop of blood.
A line of words.
I threw it at a sparrow.
Look how I sprained its neck.
The last sparrow.
Did you know that sparrows died in Delhi because of those huge glass walls of the high buildings at the city center?
The news is unproven, but I did hear about it the other day.
The very thought of it made me feel proud.
A squirrel lost its tail - I cut it with the knife of my irony.
Who needs squirrels anyways?
They annoy me with the greyness of their banality.
The wings of the butterfly got smashed under the stone of reality that I threw at it.
It was an act of mercy.
An act of bringing it to the ground.
Didn't they teach us after all that everything shall perish anyways.
Stop dreaming. I order you,
for the destruction shall continue until the whole world shall be covered in pure geometry,
The ninety degrees angles of the skyscrapers of New York city.
The perfection of steel and metal construction.
The future I am aspiring for.
And one day even the sun shall succumb to the power of my flawless grid...

Equilibrium

One day forbearance and impatience stood up against each other.
Impatience could not hold it any longer, while the forbearance wanted it to last forever.
Impatience poured out the streams of words out of her mouth, while the forbearance stood in dignified silence.
Impatience and forbearance, forbearance and impatience.
Each of them so different from the other, and yet so similar in so many ways.
Each of them standing on the opposite side of the barricade, but isn't it that the forbearance could not exist without impatience as much as impatience could not be there without forbearance.
Two extremes that compliment each other in so many ways.
Two contrasting realities that can exist only if the other is there to identify the other's space.
So distant and yet so connected.
Contrastive ideas that occupy space of my mind and fight with each other every day as I dream of peace between the two.
The state of equilibrium.
Like perfect union of Yin and Yang.
Like perfect union of past and future found in the present.
Like silence hidden in the storm.
Like force of a fall hidden in the stream.
Like sign of peace on the battlefield.
Like twilight hour.
Like my mind when I know that you are thinking about me.

The judgement

Your Honour,

I'm guilty, I admit. I failed many times in my life, everybody does. It's a human thing to make mistakes and err.
You are the only judge who knows the list of them all...
You are the only judge who sees through all the walls of imprisoned thoughts.
You are a judge of my life and I'm asking you for severe punishment. Life imprisonment.
Do not allow me to err again. Do not make me wonder aimlessly through the streets of the world, but close the gates of your prison behind me till the last days of my life.
Allow me only to stay in that small corner of the cell. For life.
You are the only honest judge I know.

Your Honour,

I'm lost. I've fallen into a pit of oblivion. Do not allow the sinner to wonder through the world of innocent. Do not allow the sinner to poison the innocent minds of theirs. Do not allow the sin to spread.

Your Honour,

I'm guilty. I have given my life into your hands. The time of your judgement has come. I'm asking you to punish me till my last breath.

Your Honour,

will you listen to me?

Back to school

Few recent conversations brought me back to my good old school days in a huge grey 2-floors building in a less metropolitan city far to the west.
No school buses - we all had to walk to school or take regular local  buses or a tram. There was no auditorium or amphitheater - all the assemblies (if any took place) were held in our PE room that was of a size of basketball field.
I hated school. Somehow from the very beginning my mind wanted to be outside the system rather than inside, and thus few months of homeschooling that happened to me in my earliest teens were the best times of my school education and I cherish those memories till now.
My dissatisfaction with the school system began at an early age of 3 when my parents decided to send me to the kindergarden,,,,,  Oh.... the famous cries and shouting in my street as I was dragged to the hated institution that is supposed to ignite the fire of knowledge in little humans..... Somehow it made me scream for the heating system to be on as I felt cold inside the grey walls. The only respite from that was the fact that we would sometimes meet a man with a monkey on his shoulder on our way. You see...  Having an elder brother who often felt bored or had to take tuitions and a fairy-tale of a grandmother left a 3-year-old familiar with letters of alphabet (thanks to grandmother) and some of the french phrases (thanks to brother's lessons that did not improve his knowledge of French though). It also led to my first educational disappointment and breakdown of value system, when as a 6 year old I was told that the word 'MOCKBA,' that was printed on the cover of my brother's book, was actually a Russian word and thus I was not able to read it properly and a word mockba does not exist in my language. Can you imagine the tears of disappointment in the eyes of a 6 year old? and anger at being so severely cheated by the world....

School also meant my mother having to take a meeting with my PE teacher in classes 1, 2, and 3 and literally beg her not to fail me...  This tragedy would have continued till the end of my school days but in class 4 somebody.... a genius I suppose,  decided that in winter our PE ground will be turned into a skating rink and thus my hidden  talents as a leader and figure skating performer were revealed. Was it really so difficult for the teachers to discover earlier that the only thing I can run after is the bus, the only thing I can throw is a grenade of words and that group games make me feel crumpled in the crowd of anonymous bodies... but figure skating.... that was something.... sheer beauty.... and thus each day a member of my family was forced to accompany me to the rink.

There are also 2 academic incidents I remember from my primary school.
Our music teacher taught me an exercise that I often do with my own students in various forms. - We were in class 2 and she made us close our eyes, listen to a piece of music and then draw what we saw.
Being disortografic was an experience of another sort - I remember an essay in which I got 2 marks as the only person in my class - fail for spellings and excellent for contents.

High school did not leave much impression on me, but it left me with deep feeling of admiration for my mother... You see... once in class there was a book of poetry by Jim Morrison lying at my desk...
Let me give you a glimpse of Jim:

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.” 

These were the things that he spoke of, but one of my teachers, not the favorite one of course, saw it and commented....'Oh, mister Morrison, at whose grave people copulate...'  And so my peaceful ad dignified mother went to school, banged her fist against a table and told the teacher in question to copulate at his own house and leave her daughter alone...

But I also had a fantastic geometry teacher, who gave me a gift.....  I was not the best student in geometry but at the end of the school year he called me by his side and said that I remind him of himself when he was my age, and he gave me a cassette of some of his favorite music - 'Iron Butterfly'...

First-aid box

I was thinking recently about two research projects that I would like to conduct...

One is on street accidents happening in metropolitan city where I live and their applications on the life of the pedestrians...

Second project involves resurrection of the games that children used to play, for they were in my opinion much nicer and natural than the ones that people play in the present days.

A friend choreographed a beautiful piece on man and woman that I saw few days back... There was one moment in that piece where a man is just screaming silently in pain or anger and the woman is trying to hold him tight so that he does not hurt himself, for this is the only thing she could do...

If I could i would have gifted you band aid, but I was not there so I could not help in gathering all those tiny pieces together. I wish I could stitch them together now...

I'll tell you a silly story... All my stories are silly, i know.... Ridiculous....

When I was a child I once got an expensive plastic doll as a gift. You know - one of those dolls that are advertised on tv - slim body, nice dress, beautiful face... But that doll proved to be the greatest disappointments of my childhood, for when I had given her a haircut her hair never grew back and all that was there was a plastic skull...

But I had a teddy bear... I still have him... He is very grey, naked, his eye has fallen out so I had to stitch him a new one and till today we sleep together whenever I visit my mom's house. You see... Real girls with real feelings like those teddy bears who have broken noses and torn ears... It doesn't matter to them that they are not new, little girls learn how to stitch so that they could do something about all those noses, ears and eyes that have been torn.

I know a boy who needs medicine, even though in his stubbornness he claims that he does not care about it... You see, he was hit by a car once long time back and his knee, hand, ear, heart got hurt... He is scared that the needles will cause him more pain while stitching... He is stubborn like a little boy, but at the same time he knows that a bit of stitching is painful in the beginning, but then little girls always take care of their teddy bears and keep some nice sweets for them...

I would want to give you a chocolate of companionship in good and bad for many years to come... when your eyes become weak, walking difficult, memory weak....

That's how little girls treat their teddy bears... and they never allow them to play on a highway, for they know that it is a very dangerous place... and where I come from, we do not like the accidents to happen.

Digressions

Kochana Mamo,

Sometimes writings should be coherent streams of words but sometimes there is a need for them to be just a series of loose digressions stitched together with invisible thread of thoughts.

Mom... Thank you for always being there... You were the only person who watched all my videos and read every single word i had written. It did not matter that you couldn't understand it all, what mattered was your presence. You were there, while others satisfied themselves with seeing my face on a poster, in a interview or with telling me that I should write for a newspaper. Do you remember how you were ill in last months and I was getting ready for a performance at university and you would come down sometimes to sit with me and I was explaining to you what 'abhinaya' is? What is the meaning of my padam... Thank you for being present there...

Mom... I was thinking few days back that Shakespeare must have had bipolar disorder too... Only a sanely mad person could have said that "All the world is a stage... "  Mom... How many roles do we have to play and how difficult it becomes sometimes....

Mom... Can I tell you a story? I'm not sure how much of it will you take as a metaphor, how much as my memory but you see...
Father always loved circus, so when I was a child I have always been forced to accompany him to watch a circus performance, Just like I was forced to collect stamps when I was six, while all i wanted to do was to give an exam to a ballet school but 'my daughter is not going to make her living by shaking her leg'.... but that's another story... i'm digressing in my digression... I hated going to the circus with father.... it always made me sad... I felt so sad and sorry for the lion that had to jump through the wheel of fire, bears that had to walk on 2 feet and elephants with chained legs....  People were laughing at the clowns throwing cakes at each other, falling on stage, getting stuck with one foot inside the bucket and i felt like crying and I wanted to get up from my seat and run to the stage and help them get up from the floor... Somehow I could never laugh at them and always felt so sorry for them...  as if their falls were my own...  I liked some of the performances though  - the jugglers, the woman with a spine of a snake...

Mom... I'm thinking a lot about idioms and metaphors these days...  It's a story that I had told you long time back.... but if I were to search for a metaphor for heart it would be a tiny green teddy bear of a smell of vanilla...

Mom... I know that I keep coming back to a boring topic of Water station once again, but you see... it taught me a lot... Just like now i'm learning a lot about languages and multiple readings... but that play taught me about the set construction.....  it taught me how to put bolts and nuts together while working on the set...    and the english classes i'm taking are teaching me about the beauty of stormy weather..... but I designed my own umbrella for the performance.... i stitched my old flower dress on top of it and painted it green - my safety net of green trees and flowers around me....  would have loved you to see the pictures.....

Kochana Mamo.... I'm tired...  good night...

And my dreams...

My fears...

Just a song

Just a song that is very much there in my mind...

The gifts

Do you remember the orange that I keep in my bedroom? It was there since I was 12. It was a beautiful gift that I wanted to keep forever so I dried it and kept it there at my speaker.
There once was an amazing dancer with beautiful long curly hair and a little 12 year old girl who wanted to learn how to dance... So she took her flute and went to the old town to play and earn her money for the dance classes.... And since she liked that dacer very much she once gifted him a box that had a small flower inside... she learnt it from a play that she watched so many times - the greatest gift that you can give is you yourself...  And the dancer gave her a gift on her birthday  - the performance was for her only and an orange that was used as a stage prop... she kept that orange forever... She even vaguely remembers him sliding down the rope in another play few years later... And the story of his first love whose name was same as mine... I think he even looked her up and married her eventually... But I can't believe that somebody like him could have become a pole dancer later on...
I recently found a guava that I'm planning to add to my little collection of memories... A fruit from the dreamlands of nature...

I still dream of a perfect birthday gift when one would take me to an empty theatre and all night I could just stand o empty stage and experience the magic of being right there....

Pole dancer... Just like I couldn't believe that you could have exchanged Shakespeare for Kingdom of Emptiness... It did buy you a dog and a nice flat... but I liked that blue room with cracked walls much more than that.... And a gift....

There once was a tree where a boy used to have tea with two girls. One was a beautiful one, a picture of utter perfection - big eyes, short height, soft contours of her face... The other was an ugly one - too tall, long face, small eyes, dishevelled hair...  The boy kept looking at one and kept talking to another... He loved the beauty of the soft face and the words and stories uttered by the other girl... He wanted to gift them gifts, so he painted the beautiful one and gave an empty blue notebook to the other one.....  Thank you for not painting my face.... What can one do with a painting but keep it on a wall and look at it every day......  I was so disappointed when I got my gift, but I think it did me well... I did not know in the beginning what to do with the empty pages of all those notebooks that you gifted me on Christmas and my birthdays, but I know it now, and they fill up with ideas for new works, blue notebook came to life as a blog....  Thank you for giving me empty space so that I could discover and re-discover myself every single day....

If you had asked me I would say "no"...  But the truth is that I would like to thank you God for making me different from others by making me me see the world differently than most people do...  Thank you for giving me all the street dogs, cats, open sky, a rainbow, leaves to look at...   Thank you for those few moments when I thought I lived through my own death... you made me go through the greatest fear of mine.... and thank you for making me pray to a heart of stone for I know that one day somewhere somehow it will awaken and somebody will finally hold my tired soul in his arms... Thank you for bipolar disorder for I prefer to see the world in its thousands colours than only see it as a spectrum of greyness...  Thank you for my grand mother who was the most loving creature of us all...

Thank you for making me loose the battle... you taught me humbleness... to win one has to loose sometimes... i'm learning patience... it is a difficult and painful lesson...  thank you for life...  I love it...  It is the greatest gift of them all...

I, myself, Draupadi...

A friend of mine went today to accompany his colleague in 'seeing a girl', while I had an encounter with two road side predators (the word romeo would be much too mild here).

I have always been disturbed with the expression “to see a girl for marriage” - nobody goes to “talk” to a girl before marrying her, as if a woman was to be seen only through the external beauty of her body. Why do people only want to see women? Why can’t women be also heard? Is my being limited only to my appearance? Should I just keep myself at the periphery of the society and family and allow events to happen to me rather than take my own life in my own hands? Should I be a passive object floating in the rivers of family and society , or should I rather have the right to stop the prevalent societal trend and choose myself the course of my destiny.

The questions connected with what it means to be a woman, what defines me as a woman? Is it just about a biology and ability to bear children? Is it just about having the yoni/vagina (words that I have problems with uttering even as a 30+ person) and its physiological functions? Is it about the roles that the society imposes on women?

As soon as I start thinking about “womanhood” I remember how my mother used to ask me “have you fallen ill?” each time she wanted to ask if I'm having my period. I remember how she would cook my father's favorite dishes, but nobody remembered to ask what would be hers. I remember how she herself suffering form cancer would prepare meals for my father, while he sat watching tv.

Do you know that marital rape is still beyond the purview of criminal law in India? I also came across a newspaper article about a panchayat in Haryana that decided that in order to fight the increasing number of rapes the marriage age of girls should be made lower. Another article was published in Tehelka about the problems that women face when trying to report cases of rape at the police station. Why is it that women are being blamed for being raped? Why is it so that teenage girls should be given away in marriage in order to protect them from a sleazy gaze of men? Why is it that Krishna in Mahabharat did not try to prevent the humiliation of Draupadi, he merely covered her up, but did not stop Duhshasana.

 Is wearing a burqa, child marriage, not allowing women to go out unaccompanied a way of protecting their chastity and honor? Or is it just another way of oppressing them? I was shown the "f... you" sign from 2 guys on a bike today when I asked a shopkeeper for help. It was 18.45, not middle of the night and I was wearing a jacket.

 Is it right to constantly cover your body in fear and be subjugated by the patriarchal society or is it needed to use the body as the act of protest like some women of Manipur who undressed themselves in front of the army camp in order to protest.

But I do not blame men for it... It's the societal problem. Do you remember good old photoshop and the photoshopped pictures of “female beauty” staring at us from covers of magazines. The mask of make-up covering the real face. Is a female body really only an object? It is another extreme on the line between covering and uncovering the body – the scarcely clad female body that the west represents is another way of seeing the body as an object of gratification for the male gaze.

A friend and I conducted a workshop for 130 male student of 1st year of college, One of the exercises was to find gesture to represent one's own personality.... If you could see the mount of hidden sexual aggression.... I felt sorry for those boys.

I don't want my man to be a picture of brainless testosterone operated machine. I would like to meet a man who would want to talk to me rather than look at me, who would feel shy to touch my hand and who would be scared that I may want to find his arms less attractive that muscular arms of other men. Naive and romantic? Maybe... but you see, I see myself as a person and would like to meet a human being not a machine in life.

Anytime, any day....

Kochana Mamo,

I miss you more than ever..........

I wish you were here with me today and I could tell you who I am, how I've changed, what I think,how far I have travelled in my mind.....

























Kochana Mamo.... Are you there looking at me through the clouds, the way I look at you every day...

Kochana Mamo.... I wish the Elves could really exist.... would tell me a story about him?

Kochana Mamo....

The outskirts

Kochana Mamo,

I want to tell you a bit about the place where I live on the outskirts of a jungle. I meet some strange creatures here:

I've met an Ogre a few times. I actually met him for the first time a year back during my residential stint at the North Pole, but the first impression that he gave me was that of a buffalo as he was trying to impress me with his very limited knowledge of a foreign language. The impression was so bad that even the Elf was put into the category of buffalos for a moment and I refused to have my favourite drink in the company of these two creatures. But I've met an Ogre a few times now, and I think he simply is a creature with many layers, like onion, and he is quite intelligent too. And I actually like him a lot. It feels very good to be experimenting with magic in his company. i can feel the sense of connection. A strange thing happened today - the Ogre held me for a moment, and it felt so good, like a child. I don't think I realised how tired I am and how my body needs peace of simple human warmth. And you know Mom,it even feels nice talking to him, and he knows how to make me laugh.
Oh Mom... I recently discovered how much I love laughing. In the North Pole my adopted father used to make me laugh, and the Elf always knows how to bring out laughter in me. And I get so amazed when i laugh loud, I feel so happy then... like a child... and i simply love laughing loud, even though many people might find it inappropriate.

But you know Mom, it's not that I like everybody here on the outskirts. There is a creature that claims to have been named after a little lamp, but I think she is more of the tube light, even though she is rather short. She worked for many years in a corporate office under some bald head minister and she keeps talking about some marketing things, companies, applications, and god knows what else. She was out with us for lunch today and I was dreaming of having a fork with me to pierce her mouth so that she would remain quiet. She is so boring!
I was invited for some food to a social media advertiser's place, whose name has something to do with the forests, but I think it was a big mistake committed by her parents. Anyways, the evening involved 4 acrobats who constantly compared which part of their body got broken and when. it was so boring that I left after an hour.

There is also Dwarf that you already know about. He often reminds me of his non-existing elder twin brother and I love having nonsense conversations with him. It feels a bit as if he was my younger brother, just like my younger brother from the forests of north-east, who by mistake shifted to the North Pole to get some rotis for his parents. He is planning to go back to his kingdom soon, and I'd love to visit him sometimes and do some magic together. We had done it once before and I enjoyed the process a lot. And I am very proud of him for he struggles hard to send the rotis home. It impresses me. Oh, and he is a fantastic painter, plays flute and recently began to learn photography.

And there is another adopted younger brother of mine here. He sometimes doubles as a charioteer and a friend. He was named after the god of war, but he is a very naughty but peaceful creature. And he has a tail, and a lovely creature attached to that tail... I think she could be an Elfian princess in disguise.

There is a native girl from the land of dreams and I find her to be a wise and interesting person and would love to spend some time with her.

There is also a creature that was named after the offerings, and I like her a lot.

And you know mom... I touched the Elf... and it felt so warm, peaceful and gentle...  I think I would love to have many occasions for my experiments with touch...

And Mom... do you know that people here have so many crazy names for their jungle friends!!!! Well, I am a bit less adventurous on that front, but the names of my animals keep changing depending on my whims and moods, so the tigers have been through different phases in their lives: Bharata and Natyam, Marx and Freud, Cat 1 and Cat 2, and now only Mr Cat...

And Mom... do you remember how I wanted to name the hamster Indira when I was 5, and grandma began to explain to me that I should not be doing such a thing for Indira gandhi was an important person and my hamster is just a small creature....
Mom... Don't you think that I am a bit ridiculous????

Kochana Mamo...

Kochana Mamo,

We haven't spoken for a long time... I miss you a lot... I think today I miss you even more than ever for there are so many things I would like to tell you about. Do you remember, you used to say about me that if there are 2 ways ahead of me in life I always choose the one that is longer and has many turns, never the straight one...  I think I walked for many days, but I think that the path I have chosen was the right one. It took me to a forest, you know? And there is a magic elf who lives there... he is the most colourful elf you could imagine. I wish you could see him...

I'm not sure what to tell you about today, there are so many things to say and I don't know which one to choose first... but I think maybe today we could try to talk about slightly lighter subjects...

I'll tell you about the elf.... He is funny you see.... He has a crooked nose and very rude manners...

Mom... can you imagine that I travelled for 1745.08 km (apparently) to find him and his manners are so bad that he didn't even offer me tea!!!!!  Do you remember how I was ill once and you walked to my house in winter in snow to bring me pastries?

Mom... Can i ask you a question? How come life is so strange sometimes that the most colourful people on earth go through life with so many bruises? I don't understand. Mom... do you think we could try to tame the elf a bit?

You know mom, he is a really funny elf...  He is a bit short of hearing and refused to wear a hearing device, so talking to him was a bit like talking to grandma:

'Grandma, would you like to have some tea?'
'Yes, yes, the cat is outside'

I gave him a dictionary and now he is now learning how to read...  But you know what mom... I tried to give him the same dictionary a few times in the past and he refused to take it...  I think he is a bit short of sight and should wear glasses more often...

You know mom, he sometimes thinks that he is a writer... But i think he has to improve his skills as a reader a bit... Mom, can you imagine that I used metaphors a few times and he didn't understand... Can you imagine????  I told him once that 'I'm being suicidal with words'  and he got really scared thinking that I will jump out of the window or something as stupid as that, while all I meant was that I want to write a few chapters in my dictionary that I am confused about.

Mom... Do you remember, when I used to study for my Sanskrit exams and I was always scared that I may fail (silly me.... Just for the record - I was always one of the best students in my class...) and you and I would sit together in the kitchen and I would give you my notebook and recite all the verses. You did not understand a word of Sanskrit, but you were there and your presence was important. Do you remember how you would keep your fingers crossed for every single exam that I had to give... And oh.. Mom... do you remember when I had a surgery and was in hospital and I asked you to bring me a book about Bharatanatyam and you brought Mahabharata instead???


Mom... will you tell him that if he dares to laugh at my little jungle I shall pierce him with my spear, cut him into pieces and feed him to the dog. Mom... will you tell the elf not to confuse me with keeping mirrors on stage. Mom... why is he always laughing at me?
Mom...

I want to...

I always wanted to write a letter to you. I would have written it on a paper that has flower petals in it, and I would have put a drop of vanilla perfume into it, so that its smell would remind you of me. But you left without leaving the address, and I didn't want to let you go...

I don't want you to go. I want you to stay. You make me feel beautiful when I see myself in your eyes. You make me feel warm and secure. I trust you. Your eyes make me feel green and alive. When you look at me I want to run towards you and become a part of you. I want to be a part of your body when you busy yourself discussing things with others. I want to stand there next to you holding your hand and giving you warmth and support in whatever you do.

I want to be a child in your arms. I want to sleep covered with your smell and wake up in the morning to watch you sleep. I want to keep your head in my lap when you are tired and sing you a lullaby so that you could be a child one more time.

I miss you. I am jealous of your work for it has so much of you, while I have nothing. And when I miss you it turns into physical pain that I feel there in my arms.

You amaze me... You give me the most wonderful gifts of my life. Something that I always dreamt of. You make me happy. Thank you for it.

I am sorry if I ever hurt you with my anger. I don't want to hurt you, I never did. I want to give you peace.

I don't want to catch you.  I want you to come and hold my hand into yours.

I want to watch your hair turn grey. I want to hold your hands and keep them warm on a winter night. I want to touch the tear on your cheek when the world laughs at you. I want to wait for you every evening by the window and learn the sound of you footsteps by heart. I want to follow you wherever you go, and when you die I want to go with you into the darkness with a candle in my hand to light your path. I want to see your face before I close my eyes for the last time. I want to take away all your sorrows and make them mine. I want to laugh at you when you are funny and quarrel with you in the morning when we decide who would be making tea. I want to know the touch of your mother's hand. I want to live in a small corner of your room. I want to bring you squirrels, cats, dogs, butterflies, monkeys, parrots and donkeys and beg you to allow us to keep them at home. I want to gift you a child that would be a part of you. I want to miss you when you are away and call you to tell you to come home. I want to tell you stories. I want to listen to your nonsense. I want to listen to your non-nonsense.

I want to be a pillow on which you keep your head when you are tired. I want to be a tree that gives you shade on a sunny day. I want to be a river that brings water to your lips. I want to be your night and day. I want to learn you by heart.

Will you allow me?

I deleted you

I deleted you. It's easy. Twenty first century allows you to press the button and delete a person. Put somebody into non-existence. Erasing the past and unborn future as if we could programme our brains not to think and remember. But can i erase memories? They still linger in my head, even though your face is just a meeting point of incoherent lines that somebody once scribbled in the sand at the sea shore.

A poet once told us to hurry and love people for they leave so quickly, and only the shoes remain and the phone that rings on...

But that dreadful twenty first century does not care for rounded dialers, only the numbers shining on a screen, like the numbers tattooed on forearms of men in concentration camps. Nameless, faceless digital numbers imprisoned inside a tiny box. Prisoners of the twenty first century.

My grandmother used to write letters to me. The most beautiful letters I could imagine, 4 words on each page for her eyes were too weak to write small letters. The stories that I heard so many times in my life...

My grandmother was walking in the street when the rains broke and a man came towards her holding an umbrella. That's how she met my grandfather. And they stay together through his army days during the war. No phones, but letters and memories. She cherished those memories for the last 30 years of her life that she spent without him.

The piano she used to play.
Exhibition of my paintings in her room when I was 6 years old.
Dog whom she taught how to dance.
My woolen dresses, caps, gloves, scarfs, sweaters that she would knit.
Her conversations with her own self as she was sitting alone in an armchair in her room.

I still have them, they are undeletable, unlike the numbers that are constantly changing together with people.

The hungry princess

The alarm rang at 6.35 am as usual and Rajkumari opened her eyes only to realise that she is lying on a hospital bed.

'Not again!!!....' she thought to herself remembering all those multiple surgeries that were performed on her in the past - the forceful insertion of black contact lenses, cutting down her height by half, multiple open heart surgeries and everything else that resulted in her suffering from a so called 'distorted self-image' disease.

But the hospital seemed different this time. First of all, after a long time Rajkumari could actually choose her hospital voluntarily, and since she was getting older and supposedly wiser everyday let's all hope that she made her choice really carefully this time.

 One of the most striking features of the hospital was that the treatment was being done for free! Can you imagine, dear reader, that there are still places in this world that do not demand extra money as fees for the doctors and nurses? She was also surprised to find out that the hospital staff believed in naturopathy and the treatment did not involve scalpels, cutting, or any other harmful equipment that could cause permanent damage to one's self, instead imagination, laughter and long conversations were used, and so our Rajkumari enjoyed spending her time with the nurses.

One of the nurses was a tiny dwarf with long beard and spiky ears. He happened to have lived in the North Pole before, and had even met our Rajkumari once in the past. He was responsible for telling Rajkumari that she was not the only person who could not stand the cold climate of the North and decided to run down to the southern parts of the country. 'Really????' our Rajkumari exclaimed in disbelief infused with a shade of bemusement.... ' but all this time I thought that I'm the only one who could not get used to strict intellectual marketing lines pronounced loudly by everybody in the North Pole, hm..., maybe I'm not that silly after all....'

Another nurse was responsible for music therapy as she exposed Rajkumari to various kinds of music from Bach to electric guitar, while yet another decided to give therapy of hugs and affection. Wasn't it Mr Che who once said that 'true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love'? 

This type of therapy seemed to be doing wonders to our Rajkumari, and so she sat on her bed and looked around with her green-grey-brownish eyes and exclaimed loudly 'BREAKFAST!!!!' To tell the truth our Rajkumari was a lady, and had it been for herself she could have satiated her hunger with a single cup of tea, but she had a tiger to feed... and the tiger was really hungry... the tiger was actually starving, as the days of constant warfare made the tiger famished...(she successfully threw a grenade last night at the troops trying to call her from the deserted kingdom..... how did the troops manage to find her new whereabouts she did not know, but still she managed to fight them away)

So Rajkumari sat quietly in the corner... well... not that quietly, but let's give her the right to be loud from time to time as she is learning how to express herself freely and clearly,  and she began to sharpen her magic spear that she was preparing for the elf. You see, she suddenly realised that she loves the art of warfare, especially if the opponent proves himself to be an elfian prince in disguise... And so she started scheming of the tortures that she would expose the elf to, before throwing his body to the hungry tiger.... 

She would first pierce the elf with her spear and then hang him upside down over a cooking fire and with her magic pen she would write different words on his skin so that he would wriggle in unbearable pleasurable laughter that this type of torturing was giving him. This over she would scratch his skin off his body to peer at everything that was hidden inside, and then she would hand over the remains of his to the hungry tiger, who would train the elf in the art of purring before deciding to finally taste the flesh of the elfian creature.... very slowly, bit by bit the tiger would consume every single part of the elfian body.... and then.....

And then the time for lunch would come, so that the elfian slave would be send to the kitchen to prepare some tasty food for our hungry Rajkumari, who can't live on tea all her life after all, but she does enjoy assisting in the kitchen.

Band aid

I hurt my finger. It was an ongoing process that lasted quite a few years and there was no band-aid around. I think the crust is still fresh and I don't want the blood to flow out of it again. I'm too old for it, you now?
Dramatic outbursts. Bad acting. I know. I don't like parsi drama myself. I like non-proscenium intimate spaces.
I hurt myself while reading. The finger was cut on some of the pages.
I recently realised how many of the children books should have been banned from the shelves. It's only now that I'm discovering how the childhood we had influences our present. Examples are many... thought I might tell you some over a cup of tea. They are very much there in that metal trunk and I think it's time to clean the house and arrange the space. I need it for myself. I don't like carrying extra luggage with me.  I recently threw away and old dress from the metro station. It feels so light without it. It changes so many things.

You know, sometimes we tend to infuse our readings with meanings that aren't really there. We place a mirror in front of the audience while we perform on stage at the same time. I'm a gate crusher into a performance that isn't even mine.
I wanted to be a good reader. There weren't many books involved and I believe in reading them thoroughly...
They might be one that I would like to learn by heart. My silly little tail of cat's brain run so far that for a moment it even imagined an optional career in gardening. But it feels scary too. I don't want to cut my finger again. It hurts. I don't enjoy throwing stones.

There was a book of naturalism once. It started in a nice way, but then some characters underwent a sudden change of style which involved pills prescribed by good old Freud and one day the reader found herself lying on a floor of a room and the two hands extended from the book and caught the reader by the throat. There are those sudden moments in life when you stop carrying for a second... you just want it to be over... and then suddenly you discover how much you want to live and that you actually do have muscles to push those hands away... What followed was a sudden international phone call, that was only bandage available at that moment.
Do you know the feeling of being so connected with somebody that the very sound of that person's voice makes you feel how that other person feels? that international connection was that strong. And in the lands further to the west a sudden worry resulted in a sudden deterioration of an already ill body and somebody was holding somebody else's hand while standing on a wiping cloth.

There was also a gradual change in language in which that naturalistic book was written... I think it made the reader feel sick and she still hasn't fully recovered. It sometimes makes girls write those words infused with a mixture of fear and inability to comprehend that someone could actually understand the writer's sense of life and humor.

A few hand claps were also involved in the cutting process. People do tend to clap a lot at the end of a performance, isn't it?  It wasn't a bad book. It's a sad book. The reader really tried to read it but one day simply couldn't do it anymore...She relocated to a small palace in the less familiar part of the city. The book is not there on the shelf anymore for many years. But I still kept the title. It was a compromise. I needed the title page because sometimes the library authorities ask for the titles if you want to stay in the library for more than just few hours. I love this library. Can't imagine myself anywhere else. I've been a member for so many years now...


I do get high on my trips sometimes... and green trees in the south do make me feel alive.
Many things were taken out from old chests of dreams that were shut for a number of years. The school, the trees, the room... They were there with me for such a long time packed neatly in my saris.

 I need a doctor with a bandage very much.   But then again... I don't like proscenium theatre, intimate space would be a better choice to stage a play.

The tale of Rajkumari

She stood up with her hands on the parapet, gazing far away at the clouds that covered the sun as it was slowly descending to fall asleep in that land of dreams beyond the horizon. The birds were still crossing the sky in their last attempt to laugh before they would fall asleep in their nests.She was standing there in expectation of seeing those beautiful green feathered creatures that would fly by the balcony every evening. She could feel the gentle touch of the wind in her hair. The same hair that would hide all her thoughts and fears seemed much softer now, as if suddenly the warmth of the place and people around helped her to brush through it every evening as she kept her head on a pillow of dreams that suddenly began to fly out freely to create magic designs on the walls around.

It rained in the afternoon as she was standing in the middle of a busy street waiting for the bus that would take her to a place where dreams transform themselves to reality. Drops of rain on her face as she looked up to challenge the sun and discovered that a painting is awaiting her somewhere high up in the sky. A rainbow of smiles and peace... Even the sense of longing seemed to have faded in colour as she looked at the bright light around here.
She smiled gently at a thought of a rainbow that her mother used to make for her among the red poppy flowers and roses that she would water on warm summer's days.

She felt another sense of warmth recently. A child laid next to her and with every breath she could feel how this tiny life absorbs every thought of hers, every breath, every emotion. It wasn't even her child, but still she wished to keep that tiny creature in her arms and just be there in that warmth. It was a new feeling for her and suddenly she began to wonder if one day she might be able to pour herself into another tiny being, a sponge absorbing the world. What kind of the world would that be? What would be the colour of his or her eyes? Would there be somebody looking at her as her own belly would swell day after day? Would he put a hand on her belly and tell stories to both of them?


There once was a Rajkumari who could have had anything she wanted provided she would give up her own self to the orders of a king. But even when she was a little girl she would often lie down in her hammock somewhere between an old pear tree and a cherry tree and she would imagine that she was not a real child of her king father. She would pluck the cherries and keep them on her ears pretending that they are the most precious earrings that one could ever had, and she would dream of lands far far away beyond the horizon...
She was a strange Rajkumari who did not want to ride on a back of black shiny horse, she preferred her donkey instead. She even kissed one a night before as she saw him standing lost somewhere in the busy street. The sense of belonging that was lost and it was not easy to find it again.
As all Rajkumaris she once dreamed of meeting a Rajkumar, but you see, the XXI century stories make Rajkumars speak a lot about dreams they have and then run away to get themselves TVs and expensive mobile phones, which often leaves Rajkumaris laying down on a cold floor of a hospital bed needing expensive multiple open heart surgeries that can sometimes be dangerous for mental health. Anyways, this part of the story happened long long time ago, and our brave Rajkumari already managed to blow up some of the forts of the plastic troops with her tiny army of words...
So what happened to her then? Nothing special, you see, she was wise enough to know that simple things can have more value that those pretty shiny boxes that we see in the TV commercials, and so she packed her tiger and a few skirts (she was a girls after all, and all the girls want to feel pretty from time to time) and decided to go away in search of a strange colourful elf with crooked nose, rude manners and strange language of images that he would take out from his magic bag every now and then.
And then??????
And then Rajkumari pierced the elf with her magic spear and she fed him to the tiger... And they lived happily ever after in a tiny house among the green trees by the lake.

my world

I live in the world of signs, colours and metaphors that stand between me and the grey world outside.
The smell of emotions...  Love of the vanilla fragrant.
Thoughts dreaming inside the entangled long hair.
I learn languages just like I learn people. The older one gets the more difficult it is to learn a new language, to learn how to read a new person. I learn patience as I scribble the letters in my little notebook and feel amazed to discover how the worlds of unknown signs slowly allow me to discover them on a board of a moving bus. I learn the letters so that one day I could learn words and grammar. I don't want to be a curious student who stops education at learning some phrases overheard here and there, I want to learn about the shapes of letters so that later on I could complete the puzzle of words around me. I want to immerse myself in the language so that one day I could even write my own stories.
I want to stand in a shade of a colourful tree and look around the garden, just like my mother did when I was born to a 42 year old woman.
I look at animals - free souls of birds flying in the sky. Green parrot's squawk when she complains secretly about the harshness of the world. The cat that keeps his head on my shoulder as we drift towards the lands of dreams. The dog that curls himself next to my feet. The mouse hiding somewhere behind the corner.
I am the chief commander of my army of words that run towards the battlefield knowing that defeat awaits them there every single day. Battlefields and markets are the places where I don't belong. My little government school had no funds to teach me how to trade the heart, they spoke of revolutions instead.
I dream of evenings spent at the threshold with stars above me and an oil lamp lit somewhere in the corner. A wrinkled hand of an old woman. A letter from the past that was found in the present. Memories and dreams intertwined in vapour flying away from a cup of hot tea.

Manual

1. Never laugh at her height for in the last I don't know how many years she was being constantly reminded of it in a rather negative way, and each time somebody speaks of her height she feels as if she was some strange specimen, a misfit, an animal in the zoo.

2. Never laugh at her poor pronunciation and spelling mistakes. None of the languages that she uses is her own, and she did spend quite a lot of time to learn each of the languages that she speaks. Unlike you she did not go to an English medium school, she went to a very simple government school and she had to learn the languages on her own. But at least she tried. She is trying to learn how to read and write in another language right now, and there is nobody around who would help her with it.

3. Never tell her that she is from abroad. She happens to have been born in the same country of humanity as the rest of the people in this world.

4. Never tell her that she is just a Bharatanatyam dancer for you have no idea about other things that she has done in her life. She did not study at a fancy institute abroad, but the moment she decided that she actually wants to be a bit more than just a Bharatanatyam dancer she did her own studies in libraries, by meeting people, by watching people's work, working with people and by stealing knowledge in every possible way. She is a big thief when it comes to knowledge and she's always hungry for more.

5. Never tell her that she does nothing in life, for she actually does quite a lot and tries hard to make independent living.

6. Give her gifts. But not the material ones, she does not care about them. Give her gifts that are special and only for her. Give her words, she loves them. Give her moments to remember. Give her memories, and give her a gift of sharing your thoughts and fears. To give somebody your own vulnerability is the greatest gift of trust. Give her knowledge. Teach her everything you know, she always loves learning.

7. Give her time. If you don't have it try to make it for her. She is not greedy for time, but it is the gift of time that would make her feel important for you.

8. Accept her for the way she is. She does try hard to accept you for the way you are, no matter how complicated that is. Understanding lies somewhere in between.

9. Try to understand her moods. If she is angry then most probably she is angry with herself rather than with you. Her anger is often self destructive. She pretends to be a strong person with an air of self-importance, but in reality she is just a girl with very low self-esteem who is scared that you might reject her. Remember that if she gets angry it means that she does care. She does not like getting angry, and it always works when you try to make her laugh in such situations.

10. Talk to her. Anytime and about anything. It makes her feel important. She loves it when you share your thoughts, work, opinions, jokes, words, fears, happiness with her. She has not developed any telepathic abilities as yet.

11. Give her compliments if you think she is worth it. But never try to give her the false ones. She would never admit it in your face but she loves compliments, she did not hear many in her life.

12. Never shout at her nor try to raise your hand. It brings some scary memories into her head, they still hurt.

13. Be frank with her. If you care do tell her so, if you don't also tell her - she deserves to know, and she is big enough to deal with it.

14. Try to ask about her life and work. She would love to discuss her ideas with you, even though it frightens her that you might find her silly and uninteresting. And believe me, if she ever asks you for help, or your opinion it does mean a lot.

15. Love her cat, for he is the most important companion of hers.

16. Be patient, she does know that she is not easy to deal with.

17. Be gentle, for she is a real girl with real emotions and not some kind of machine.

18. Don't lie. The hardest truh is always better than the sweetest of lies.

Please follow the instructions given above if you wish to obtain the unlimited warranty period.

Ordinary man

It was one of those days that leaves you heavy at heart when the lightness of anticipation has to give space to the stones of disappointment.
She walked through a long street and each of the steps made her feet fall deeper nd deeper into a blackish dust that covered everything around. The machines in the garages were whining like women when they take turns to watch over a dead body. Broken pieces of various parts of old trucks were scattered on what remained of the green grass. A black cylindric shape had arabic inscription on it. A pile of tyres of various shapes was lying on the side of the road. Had it been somewhere else she could imagine that a bunch of children could make use of them and transform them into colourful houses, palaces and forts of their imagination, but the street did not seem to want to indulge itself  much in the games of imagination. It seemed to her that the greasy paddles are waiting to catch her with invisible hands and are eager to wash away all the colours of her existence so that she would become  as invisible and numb as them.
Her heart felt heavy. It felt heavier than any other day for the feeling of being so close and at the same time so far away from the open sky made her feel even more miserable than she actually was. She looked up at the clouds. Their shapes and colours made her think of old ships travelling through the seas. Their dignified movements as they crossed the sky in oblivion of the human existence below them. A bird in the sky. So free... a messenger between the known and unknown, between the past and future, between you and me...
The messenger of all those unspoken words and thoughts so hidden under my skin and yet wanting to become transparent.
The irony of faith that makes that what is private a public affair, and that what is public a private one.
The desire to pour all my being into another vessel and allow you to close the lid so that I could stay there forever.
She felt like screaming today. It was today that she realised that she met a human being. A man. She stood by the lake a few days ago watching a parrot flying in the sky and it reminded her of a dream she had long time ago... Was it the same lake that she saw that night?
The man she saw was not a king that you would hear about in fairy tales. He was a very ordinary creature, but it was this ordinariness that made him special. It was because of his bare feet that stamped so lightly on the ground that she sometimes thought that one day he would turn into a tree and then she would hide in the shadow of its branches. To think that she had been so close to him and yet the invisible wall kept her so far...
She stopped as the street ended and it was time to cross another street full of signboards and rushing vehicles. She turned... What was she thinking? Did she think that she would find the outstretched branches behind her? There was nothing behind her but a dirty dusty street...
A man sat on the throne and adjusted his crown as the crowd of attendants busied themselves around him.
She crossed the street and boarded a bus... a seat next to her was empty... she knew that a man would enjoy all the small pleasures of sharing minute observations of the world around... but the king has his duties and she has no right to turn kings into ordinary men...
I wish she could...

I don't have a house, but I do have home...

I don't have a house, but I do have home...
Every evening before sleep I enter that space of my mind that allows me to be myself. Just myself, nothing more and nothing less than that. The only time when I can be really naked. Have you ever stood naked in front of a mirror and looked at yourself? tried to see who you really are? Not just the skin covering the flesh but all those thoughts that hide underneath.

I saw a girl once. She was not one of those beautiful faces that you would die for. I'm not even sure if you would remember her the next day. She stood in front of a mirror... The colours of her thoughts were a strange mixture of blue and green paint just like the sky, the lake and the trees she had seen once in a dream. I think you might like to see her naked... Dressed only in the colours of her thoughts... Your fingers brushing through her entangled fears in a gentle attempt to untie all the knots.

A furry ball is my home. The touch of his warmth as I extend my hand to feel another being next to me. Memories hidden in brown wool... A peacock on the wall... A sound from a mosque... A night of singing by the fire... A swing hanging from a tree... A bath in a geyser on a desert...

I saw a girl once. She stood in front of a looking glass watching how tears form rivers flowing down her cheeks. Rivers are made of blue colour, and so are lakes. Would mister Jung want to say a few words about  desires and reality?

I saw a girl once. She stood in front of glasses. She smiled for a moment... It was one of those moments that lasts forever.

My grandmother used to look at the world through a magnifying glass... I saw a girl who laughed loud and the trees around her responded to her happiness...

I don't have a house, but I do have home...

Sometimes I don't feel like living anymore...

We sat down looking at each other across the table of differences in age and life experiences. But we were very similar to each other. Same cups of milk coffee, same eyes, same gap between the front teeth, fat ankles. We were sitting there in silence and I must have looked outside the window to catch a glimpse of a plum tree. There was nothing extraordinary in two women sitting together in a kitchen. The bond of womanhood.
'Sometimes I don't feel like living anymore' she said.

Many years and thousand of coffees later we spoke on the phone in the evening. 'I will live, I promise, I want to'... And we made plans of life and what it would be like and laughed at the perspective of their realisation.

But sometimes promises are not meant to be kept... like shoe lace hanging from the fan, like 100 tablets of heart medicine and a bottle of wine, like jumping down from 16th floor of an apartment building, or jumping into the coldest of cold waters, or in the most prosaic of ways on the hospital bed..........................

I'm sitting now by the table with a cup of tea and as I think about her in the kitchen I begin to wonder what it means to be alive. Where is the difference between living a life and surviving from one day to another.
It is so simple when we look at it at the basic level of our needs of food and shelter - but what if financial security is not enough for somebody to feel alive?

I am scared of big metro stations and streets with hundreds of words staring at me from the advertising boards. I stopped at the metro station once and kept looking at an old man in a hat, who walked so slowly among the speeding crowd. Where was everybody rushing at that hour? His lips looked as if they had been sealed, as if he had not spoken for years, and I couldn't but begin to wonder if you actually pay attention to what he wanted to say. Did I actually pay attention to what she wanted to say while she was sitting in her armchair... What happens to those whose words and ways of living do not conform with the images thrown at us from a TV screen?

Driver, please, stop the world and allow me to get down at the next stop.

Can you remember the last time you felt truly alive? I feel alive in my work but outside that space? I used to feel alive while sitting under the tree with a cup of chai and a book in my hand. A dog would come for a pat and as I looked up I could feel the sun on my face and I would become amazed with the colours of leaves above my head.

Life hides in the smallest moments around us. It is like a patchwork quilt of tiny pieces of memories and happiness. It is hand made, and not stitched by some machine and sold as a mass product.
I heard them talk about a business plan today - buy cheap, stitch cheap, sell cheap, earn fast...
A friend of mine paints her own shirts... private use.
I like sleeping under cheap colourful bedsheets. I always take time to choose them carefully. They are me.

The drum.

Ta dhin dhit ta dhin...

I was a 6 year old child when I felt the call of wild freedom entering my body with a loud sound of a drum played by a black skinned shaman dancing in a jungle of my childhood just outside the middle-class window of security and order. My face against a cold glass and fear in my mother's heart. Did she feel then that this sound shall accompany me throughout my life?

Dha Tete Tha tete...

I was eleven. 34'51N 5'44E  Biskra. Algeria. Africa.
He was a boy who had nothing and having nothing is the most precious possession of those who dare to dream. And so he would often dream to the rhythmic sounds that his fingers produced on a huge metal can that would keep upside down by the wall of the house facing my window. Did you know that sounds can sometimes speak more than words? Did you know that the innocence of childhood nurtures your being more than language you speak? Everyday I would wait for the magic concert below my window. Every day we would roam around happily in our small oasis of freedom and integrity. One day a boy drew a sparrow and said it reminded him of me. And the next day he gave me a drawing of the same bird with 3 words written underneath... I love you...  The innocence and freedom of childhood.
But another voice said it would rather breed Arabian horses than Arabs and some of the childhood dreams were broken by an unknown till then word 'racism'. The fingers on a metal can against shiny middle-class drum kit of strictly fixed rules of behaviour obeyed under the supervision of an opera conductor.


Dhit ta dhene ta a...

The wedding processions in Delhi are full of the sounds of incoherent drumbeats, trumpets, and bursting of crakers. Sounds loud enough to awaken the dead and make them stand somewhere in the corner of the street shouting at the crowd to become silent and allow them to sleep in their dreamless reality.

Ta hatha jhom...

I love you. Ta dhing... (She turned her face away.) But I lo... Ta dhing ta (She turned her face the other side) I need... Ta dhing tat ta (She bent forward holding her stomach) Do I...

and then the Tandava dance started...
A bird spread its wings and flew away from a white sheet of paper...

Fragments of Crave and 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane

At 4.48
when depression visits
I shall hang myself
to the sound of my lover's breathing

I do not want to die

I have become so depressed by the fact of my mortality that I have decided to commit suicide

I do not want to live

This is not a world in which I wish to live.

 I want to scream for you, the only doctor who ever touched me voluntarily, who looked me in the eye, who laughed at my gallows humour spoken in the voice from the newly-dug grave, who took the piss when I shaved my head, who lied and said it was nice to see me. Who lied. And said it was nice to see me. I trusted you, I loved you, 

Sometimes I turn around and catch the smell of you and I cannot go on I cannot fucking go on without expressing this terrible so fucking awful physical aching fucking longing I have for you. And I cannot believe that I can feel this for you and you feel nothing. Do you feel nothing?


And I go out at six in the morning and start my search for you. If I've dreamt a message of a street or a pub or a station I go there. And I wait for you.

(Silence.)

I want to sleep next to you and do your shopping and carry your bags and tell you how much I love being with you

 And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand an go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes
 
and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend  you when I touch you   and whimper when I'm next to  you and whimper when I'm not  and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder  who  you  are  but  accept  you  anyway  and  tell  you  about  the  tree  angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want what you want and think I'm loosing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really don't want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the/ overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.

(Silence.)
I've never in my life had a problem giving another person what they want. But no one's ever been able to do that for me. No one touches me, no one gets near me. But now you've touched me somewhere so fucking deep I can't believe and I can't be that for you. Because I can't find you.


Do you think it's possible for a person to be born in the wrong body? (Silence.)

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you for rejecting me by never being there, fuck you for making me feel shit about myself, fuck you for bleeding the fucking love and life out of me, fuck my father for fucking up my life for good and fuck my mother for not leaving him, but most of all, fuck you God for making me love a person who does not exist,



I dread the loss of him I've never touched love keeps me a slave in a cage of tears
I gnaw my tongue with which to him I can never speak
I miss a man who was never born
I kiss a man across the years that say we shall never meet


my thought walks away with a killing smile leaving discordant anxiety
which roars in my soul

 No hope No hope No hope



A song for my loved one, touching his absence the flux of his heart, the splash of his smile

In ten years time he'll still be dead. When I'm living with it, dealing with it, when a few days pass when I don't even think of it, he'll still be dead. When I'm an old lady living ion the street forgetting my name he'll still be dead, he'll still be dead, he'll still be dead, it's just
fucking
over



and I must stand alone

My love, my love, why have you forsaken me? he is the couching place where I never shall lie
and there's no meaning to life in the light of my loss

Built to be lonely to love the absent

Find me
Free me
from this

corrosive doubt futile despair

horror in repose

I can fill my space fill my time
but nothing can fill this void in my heart



The vital need for which I would die




Cut out my tongue tear out my hair
cut off my limbs
but leave me my love
I would rather have lost my legs
pulled out my teeth gouged out my eyes than lost my love

Sanity is found at the centre of convulsion, where madness is scorched form the bisected soul.


At 4.48

I shall sleep

I came to you hoping to be healed.

You are my doctor, my saviour, my omnipotent judge, my priest, my god, the surgeon of my soul.

And I am your proselyte to sanity.




– You've seen the worst of me.

– I know nothing of you.

– But I like you.

(Silence.)

– You're my last hope. (A long silence.)
– You don't need a friend you need a doctor. (A long silence.)

(A very long silence.)

– But you have friends. (A long silence.)
You have a lot of friends.
What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive? (A long silence.)
What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive? (A long silence.)
What do you offer? (Silence.)
We have a professional relationship. I think we have a good relationship. But it's professional.

(Silence.)

I feel your pain but I cannot hold your life in my hands. (Silence.)
You'll be all right. You're strong. I know you'll be okay because I like you and you can't like someone who doesn't like themself.  I'll miss you. And I know you'll be ok.

When I walk out of here at the end of the day I need to go home to my lover and relax. I need to be with my friends and relax. I need my friends to be really together.

(Silence.)

I fucking hate this job and I need my friends to be sane. (Silence.)


you will always have a piece of me because you held my life in your hands

like a bird on the wing in a swollen sky my mind is torn by lightning


What am I like?


the child of negation

out of one torture chamber into another
a vile succession of errors without remission every step of the way I've fallen

Anguish for which doctors can find no cure

I hope you never understand
Because I like you

I like you
I like you

still black water
as deep as forever
as cold as the sky
as still as my heart when your voice is gone
I shall freeze in hell of course I love you you saved my life

I wish you hadn't
I wish you hadn't
I wish you'd left me alone

I've always loved you
even when I hated you

the only thing that's permanent is destruction we're all going to disappear
trying to leave a mark more permanent that myself


the vital need for which I would die to be loved



I'm dying for one who doesn't care
I'm dying for one who doesn't know

I have no desire for death no suicide ever had



watch me vanish watch me



vanish watch me
watch me


It is myself I have never met, whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind



please open the curtains

For myself.

W zyciu piekne sa tylko chwile...

I saw a field of golden sunflowers on a summer's day. Thousands of suns under the blue sky. Only once, and only for a moment as we walked from a tiny train station of a sleepy town.
But this is a story of yesterday. A story of a small peace sign that was there on one's favourite bag...
Is it there today too?
Today is a mixture of the past and future. Is it really possible to change one's life so easily? To travel miles and reach a place where you can really start afresh. Be the same person that you once were... The peace sign, the sun on the face, the touch of the leaves, the touch of the street dog, getting drenched in the rain and enjoying it...
I know that the past is still there inside me, but maybe new beginnings are really possible?
I always knew that touch has this amazing energy that allows one to feel the nature of connections with other people, but maybe similar things are possible with places? Maybe some places can have inviting energies, while some other simply tire us up?
I feel at home after a long time. Peace. Maybe it is not the same kind of peace as I experience while walking among the green palm trees, but peace is here around me. And it seems as if the city was inviting me to come.

I had a dream once... Always same dream that I stole while having tea under a tree...

Dream of a small room, a table, a chair, glasses, cats, window, lake, trees, school, he sitting by the table and writing, a little girl running and laughing while playing, 2 cups of tea...

Funny how Shakespeare once died for 50000rs salary... or was it 40000 rs course in modelling the emptiness?

But I'm here now and it feels as if travelling all those miles brought me closer to this dream again. Dreams are to be made and lived, not preached and forgotten.

The peace sign on a bag... I still have it, just like the memories of golden fields of the sunflowers when we all walked from a tiny station of a sleepy town.

W zyciu piekne sa tylko chwile... dlatego czasem warto zyc....

Simple story

Sometimes there comes a moment in life when one feels tired of constant running and all the unexpected spirals and turns that life brings, and needs a simple story. No speed. No lofty words. No dramatic events. Just simple words over a cup of chai. No additional characters. Just two people with their huge backpacks of experiences and fears and a long awaited story.
There once was a boy who had nothing, only the innocence of a child inscribed in his soul... And there was a girl who was entrapped in a cage of her fears and illusions. They've met once as children...
The girl got lost on a desert and the boy took her hand to help her find the way to the land where the trees were green, the parrots lived and many children laughed sitting under a huge thousand year old tree and listening to stories told by their hundred year old grandmother. Life seemed so peaceful there in this little oasis at the heart of the busy world.
Suddenly one day the children looked at themselves and realised that they suddenly grew up and entered the world of adults. The girl was scared of becoming an adult. It seemed to be a painful process of vivisection of her beliefs and values that she cherished, so everyday she started falling deeper and deeper into the cage that the world was preparing for her. Her long hair got entangled in a knot of thoughts that exploded one day when it could not bare itself any longer. She was desperately searching for the boy's hand, but he left in search of bread. He was an adult after all, and there was no space left in adulthood for green leaves, birds flying high in the sky and empty boxes that one could gift to each other. In adulthood one has to be serious and walk straight ahead without turning back at crazy memories of the childhood that one had.
The girl was lost again in life and there was no hand around her, but she was not an ordinary girl. She had an amazing gift of faith and hope that one day she would meet her childhood friend again to remind him of the stories they used to tell each other as children. Hope can sometimes be stronger than reality around us...
So even though it was unreal the girl took out a golden thread from her pocket and threw it up in the air... and she began to walk believing that the thread would lead her straight to the boy's feet... And so it did...
Sometimes life writes stories for us but sometimes we can write stories and scripts for ourselves too...
They sat in a small tea shop somewhere in the busy world not really knowing what to say to each other. So many years have passed... The silence and incoherent, unimportant words disturbed them. But it was not the words that were important. They did not meet for words... The boy looked at the girl and even though her face was that of a mature woman now she still had that smile that made him feel... How did it make him feel the girl wondered as she looked into his eyes observing her from behind glasses. She always used to smile at the thought of his short sighted eyes following her wherever she would go during their childhood days as if in fear that she may get lost somewhere in the desert and he will never be able to find her again. If his fear was that strong then why did he allow himself to become an adult? But there was no space for regrets, buts or ifs. It was only about them. The girl took out the golden thread out of her pocket and the boy was amazed to see how it's other end fell right next to his feet. He lift it up to pass it to her and their hands met... It's not the words but the touch and energies that we give to each other that are important.
 They left the shop holding each other hands... and now they are searching for their own green tree under which they could tell stories to thousand of children that pass by as they grow old together and each day brings new wrinkles to their hundred years old short sighted eyes... and they are still holding each other's hands...