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...