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...

Billi ki laash

I wrote this silly story few years back but last night I really experienced it.  I am so sorry cat... Loved you a lot...

Aaj maine sadak par ek laash dekha. Billi ki laash. Koi ajibsi billi thi yah jo na yaha ki thi, na vaha ki thi. Kahi beech ki thi yah billi, ya shayaad kahi ki nahi thi.
Sadak par billi ki laash.
Aisa laga ki billi kahi daurti thi bahut samay se. kaha dorti thi? Kaha se? kyo? Yah mujhe nahi maloom. Shayaad billi ko bhi maloom nahi thi. Shayaad daurna lakshya se zyada mahattvapoorn tha? Shayaad koi lakshya nahi tha? Shayaad na koi ant ana koi shooruvaad tha, shayaad daurne kea lava kuch bhi nahi tha… kisko pata?
Sadak par daurte hui billi ki lash.
Shaayad ab hi, mar jane ke baad billi ko pata chala ki daurne ka karan kyat ha? Ya shayaad yah hi pata chala ki koi bhi karan tha nahi. Sirf shunyata. Aur kutte. Shunyata aur kutte.
Sadak par daurte hue billi ki lash kutto ke beech.
Bahut sare kutte the aas paas. Kuch na kuch kutte apna safed daant dikha rahe the. Safed daant par khun ki choti si bundiya dikh rahi thi. Billi ka khun.
Sadak par daurte hue billi ki laash safed daantwale kutto ke beech.
Kuch na kuch kutte chup chap baithte the. Aisa lagta tha ki ve intazaar kar rahe hain. Jab dusre kutte billi ki laash apne daant se tod denge tab ye chup chap baithe hue kutte apne daant se billi ka dil chote chote tukdo me tod denge. Kha lege. Har khun ki bundi piyege.
Sadak par daurte hue billi ki laash safed daantwale kutto ke beech jo sirf khun ka intezaar kar rahe the.

„Mujhe paisa do! Koi mujhe paisa nahi deta hai!Mujhe paisa chahiye! Aaj do, kal do, apna sherwala uncle se mangvao paisa mere liye!” – Ek kutte ne bola.
„Mujhe apna sharir do! Mujhe sharir chahiye kisi ka” – dusre kutte ne bola, ya shayaad yah bhi us pahle kutte ki avaaz thi.
„Yah billi hai, koi kutta nahi! Usko yaha rahne ki zaroorat nahi hai! Bhaga do usko yaha se!!!” – ek kutti ki avaaz.
„Main us billi ko janta hu” – ek aur kutte ne bola – “main us billi ke saath khel raha tha pahle. Accha khel tha! Bahut accha! Main billi ko katta tha, bahut katta tha, itna katta tha ki uske sharer se khun nikalne laga. Is khun ka mahak kitna mitha tha! Aur bevakuf billi bar bar mujhe apna sharir ka kuch naya hissa dikhati thi katne ke liye! Kitna accha khel tha! Tum bhi khel sakte ho!.”

Billi ki laash ne jo sadak par thi achanak thoda sa hilne lagi. Shaayad vo abhi tak zindi thi yah billi? Usne aankh kholi. Kahi door dekh rahi thi yah billi. Aisa lag raha tha ki vaha kuch hai… kuch hai jo sirf billi dekh sakti hai… Shaayaad billi ko laga raha tha ki vaha door koi hai. Aisa koi jo hai. Aisa koi jo aaega. Uske haatth me lathi hoga aur vo sare kutto ko bhagaega vaha se. Shaayaad billi ko laga ki un kutto ke beech ek aadmi tha. Srishthi ka pahla aadmi. Srishthi ka pahla insaan jo janta tha ki insaan ko kabhi kabhi insane banna hai aur apne pagalpan me daurna hai kahi door.
Shaayaad billi ne kuch dekha vaha.

Kya vaha koi tha? Yah hum kisi se puchh bhi nahi sakte hain. Yah to sirf billi ki laash janti hai. Yahi laash jo sadak par hai kutto ke beech. Kutto ne kisi ko dekha nahi, lekin billi us taraf hi dekh rahi thi. Kya vaha sach me koi tha? Ya shaayad yah sir ek sapna tha jo billi ne marne se pahle dekha. Kisko pata?

Sadak par daurte hue billi ki laash ko jo safed daantwale kutto ke beech, jo sirf khun ka intezaar kar rahe the.

Sare kutte billi ke paas aae. Unke safed daant aur laal laal billi ka khun…
Safed aur laal.
Kutte aur billi.

4.48 Psychosis

I saw the reflection of her face in the mirror  in a dim light at exactly  4.48, when she stood with her wrists slit and the redness of her being dripping down on her white trousers. Love me, she said... Love me...
That's how I first met Sarah, and I've kept meeting her for so many years of my life... Night after night and day after day... Love me...
She kept waiting to be loved and I kept waiting for her to tell me whose love was she anticipating so much... Love me...
Until the day when I realised that it was me she kept calling, me she was waiting for, me she was needing. Love me...
She wanted me to love myself in her, something that she was incapable of doing herself. Something that I was not able to do for so many years. And what was stopping me? Sometimes it is so complicated to comprehend ourselves, our own needs and feelings.
Love me...
My wings might have been broken hundreds of times, but still I know I have the strength to fly again.
My body might have been torn into thousands of little pieces, but still I have the power to pull myself together.
My world might have been shuttered more than once, but still I exist.
And I don't want to run away from myself anymore. I want to stand in front of the mirror and whisper... I love you...

For myself and Sarah Kane.

Synchronicity

I am a magician in the greatest circus of the world. Each day I take myself out of my hat and place in front of you so that you could examine the wrinkled structure of my skin. The fears coiled at the bottom of my spine. The hopes trying to reach the sky like the balloons that a twelve year old child tried to sell to a half drunken crowd at 11 PM on the last night of the carnaval.
Sometimes I dig deeper in the hidden layers of my Jungian spheres of unconscious. I pulled out the feeling of insecurity the other day. It wore a sari and had long curly hair. We took the same bus together, but I decided to get down before seeing the turning face. The feeling left by the green DTC bus, but how much damage has it caused me in the past?
A rabbit of my low self-esteem was held by its otherwise dangling ears. He looked so funny in the center of the stage unable to squeak or move its legs while being held in the spot light. I let it hog on the grass as it began to complain about the pain at the back of the vertical axis of the body... or was it the horizontal axis of time? I heard him say that his back hurts.
I cast a spell and a street opened in the middle of the audience. The sign read it leads towards the eternal happiness, but my heart and feet chose to run over the black wire hissing, twisting and spiraling on its way to the lands of my dreams miles away from the reality.
I stood with eyes closed by the side of the street waiting for his arrival. My hand outstretched with a key to my heart, and that firm belief that one day he would return to find me. He would keep a gramophone to play the piano to the monkeys and I would follow him to the desert. And no... I will not see his FACE in a BOOK... He will come to say that he had seen me in a dream before. But they declared me mad and drove to the hospital instead.

The smell of a butterfly

She was walking through the city that day and somehow each end every smell reminded her of the decaying effect that city life had on society and culture. One more such stench and she might even vomit she thought. And to think that some creatures, whom we often don't even perceive as human, live all their lives picking up such dirt from under our noses. Do they constantly feel disturbed by the rotting values mixed with pieces of daily bread that the wealthy ones throw away from their windows? Or did they get used to their demeaning existence?
She wondered where did all the trees go, and then her eyes fell on two huge MCD dustbins. One was grey like the city around her, the other had the green colour of nature. Did they cut down all the branches and buried them in the trash? Uncivilised civilisation vs Organic nature. They burst some crackers after their cricket match last night, but she was not sure who the winner was.
Her thoughts drifted towards the boy who found her swimming in the river eons back. How peaceful and colourful their days were on the desert where he lived. She left her shadow far away and was just a little girl lost in the oceans of the world. But there was no danger involved. Only peace in the heart. Where was the boy today? Did he vanish together with the disappearance of a flight bound to nowhere? Was he still walking in the desert? Or did he lose himself in the wanton pleasures of the city?
As she was pondering so her feet came to a sudden halt. In the middle of a parking space there was a black and blue butterfly lying on the concrete. One of its wings was torn. She picked it up an kept on her palm. She was not sure what to do next but she knew she could not leave this flying painting of nature to a certain death under some heavy vehicle. She still had a vague memory of a film she watched many years back in which a dancing girl breaks her ankle and the magic of a puppeteer turns her into a butterfly. She could very easily identify herself with that girl and butterfly today.
A huge car stopped next to her and a wealthy mother of a fat child ordered in a high pitched voice "Could you please come here? He would like to see your pet. He has never seen a butterfly before, we still haven't taken him to the zoo."
Really? she thought... do you really need to go to the zoo to see a butterfly? You see, she would meet at least one butterfly each day. There were more butterflies around her than people she knew, and she could feel connected to the souls of those butterflies more than to direct ties that linked her with the outside world.
She thought of the boy again... would he think about her when he sees a butterfly? Or has he forgotten her completely?
She walked to the park and kept the butterfly on a small patch of grass next to some flowers. She did not want to go away, as if the magic of the butterfly captured her whole existence. She did not want to leave the colors and the wounded wing and dissolve herself in the world of those horrible stenches, fat children and the zoo with captivated animals.
She did not want to leave but she did...so that now she could sit with her fingers flying over the keyboard of her laptop to tell you the story of that day when she found a wounded butterfly in the busy market street.

Mercedes Benz

The stretched hands of a peace sign crossed
the shiny red crane of  the new social order.
I shut my eyes not to see
the whirling body of the forth class citizen
striving for shade on a sunny pavement of my country.
Is there a bottom line that your dignity would hit
when you cease to be human,
and become living meat,
an animal roasting on  the cement of the city?

the lost order of things

I lost myself
somewhere in between the sliding doors of the metro train
and the open window of the bus
the heart of the forest girl hit the wall of oblivion
with thoughts galloping like black horses
following the words and photographs of the speedy city at 2 PM on a Summer day.
Was it a plan of fortune
Or unfortunate turn of events that
made me stand with my eyes closed and the hand extended in the middle of the crossroads?
A tree with tired branches and brownish leaves of a thirty and five springs of greyish hair
that lost touch with the landscape and begged for directions lost in the traffic of events.
Dear God... Please come and find me for I lost myself
somewhere in between the sliding doors of my own mind
and the open window of other hands around me,
find me so that the horses could graze again on the plains surrounding the green land of the forest.

Ironic, iconic, but not interesting

After everything had been said between you and me, why do I still feel restless and wait for your unspoken words.
Why do I speak to you with my eyes closed and imagine that maybe somewhere far you are now thinking about me the way I do of you.
I don't even know you. Ironic, isn't it?
Iconic, isn't it?
But not interesting. Interesting would have too many syllables to cover the distance between us. I never thought of myself as interesting, have you?
I miss you... these days I miss you in a blue colour of an open sky. 
Simple as that.
Missing that human that you were.
       

Silence

I have chosen silence, it is a very prominent figure of speech. Sometimes remaining silent can help you in finding the dignity that was lost while the words were flowing out of its own, as if they had their own independent existence that you cannot control.  They floated and floated (would be great if you could sometimes help me to find a synonym for floating, I always admire how good you are with words, while for me they stick to my skin like little drops of sweat that has a salty taste after I finish my rehearsal) but they couldn't reach anywhere. Is there always somewhere where one has to reach? Can't we just float (see - again a synonym would be needed) aimlessly through life enjoying the sweetest bites of it? Eating life like children having chocolates - open a box and pick up anyone you want and you imagine that the box would never become empty. Or you secretly enjoy the sweet taste of things in your mouth... hidden somewhere behind an old tree, your grandmother's dress or simply sitting on a bed in your room? I love licking chocolate when it melts on my fingers. Developed the taste for it when I was a real child, but I had told you this story before. 
I don't even know if you are enjoying my stories. They are becoming shorter and shorter every day. I think I'm tired. Sometimes it feels as if every word was taking away a bit of me, wiping me away from the surface of the earth. As if  I were the chocolate melting in your eyes when you are reading this. A playwright once told me that writing is a very private affair, something that drains him out and makes him feel that he doesn't want a company of people around him anymore. 
Can a soul hold somebody's soul in the arms? Can you hold me now?
 I think I'm melting.
Silence is a very prominent figure of speech. Can you break it? As if you were breaking a glass, a brick or a wall? I hate walls around me.... Can a soul hold anther soul? Silence... Figure of speech... break... wall... silence...

The lost words

I lost some words. I don't remember if it was me who let them go, or was it the words that wanted to run away from me. 
Little "I love you" run away from my blue skirt, but it stood in front of a huge old mirror with a wooden frame and suddenly got scared of its own distorted face which read "I hate you".
So "i love you" run away and hid behind it's mother. Other words tried to run away too, they wanted to be a string of pearls that I write on the keyboard but the dyslectic writer mixed them up a bit: Do you stillll memberre how the green taste apple????
Other words got stuck in my mouth when i was to shout them loud so that a child of the desert could hear them properly, but they refused to leave when the time was needed... They are sitting now somewhere in the company of grapes and green apples. Laughing like mad children, while I search for them sweeping under my new bed.
The words that are lost..... will they ever be found???