The Enemy.

I fucking hate you.


For being the first post on this blog and the 50th. 


Thank you to everyone else that I can only muster adoration for. Overlooking content, 50 is a good number. 


Cheers. xx


- The Frozen Flame is now melting and nobody can save it. 

Torniquet.

"I learned to live, half a life

And now you want me one more time"- Christina Perri

You get inside of me and drain the life out of me.

You leave venom in my bloodstream.

You reduce my sanity to nothing.

Your ego beats mine and I can't even put up a fight.

But you always come back.

You come back to place me back on my high horse you so carefully constructed. 

You come back to wipe my tears.

You come back once you're scared you hurt me.

You come back, because you always know you hurt me.

You come back to plant a kiss.

But then you tell me things you really shouldn't be telling me.

You tell me you've loved me before I knew what it really even meant.

You tell me that all the things that happen around me, happen only because you make them.

You tell me I haunt your thoughts from early mornings to late nights.

You tell me you can't breathe without our daily fight.

You tell me you love me without the glow that surrounds me.

How you could even muster a love like this one is beyond you.

This is beyond me and it's beyond you.

You said you weren't coming back but you did.

You always want to disappoint me but you don't. You can't.

And you hate yourself for it and love me for it.

I don't know which I hate and which I love.

I don't know how long we're in it for but it's going to leave us both lifeless, of that I'm sure. 

I need to see you to feel normal again.

But when I do,

I'm going to come back home with blood-stained cheeks for where tears should have been. 

And a smile that reaches my soul. 

Loser.

"If I've been on your mind,

You hang on every word I say,

Lose yourself in time,

At the mention of my name,

Will I ever know how it feels to hold you close,

And have you tell me, 

Whichever road I chose, you'll go?" -Adele

Most times I don't even know who the culprit is. Which one of us is contorting reality and dreams and concocting a bottomless pit to trap the other one into, not necessarily out of spite, and which one, pretending to be the victim, is resisting every little bit of this, somewhat possible without self-destruction, alliance. 

But even in those briefest of moments where I can figure out the roles played by each of us in this convoluted yet such a simple way of life that we've temporarily chosen, I fall face flat because every lead in this 'investigation' hits me, and each time more forcefully, with the realization that we're both equally the criminals as well as the victims in this suspense. 

Who is to say which one of us found whom. Maybe you made me catch on to the trail you so carefully left behind, or maybe, I lured you straight out of hiding because I knew exactly what you were looking for and exactly what you chose not to see. Knowing your target's strengths and weaknesses always made you that much more cautious, that much more powerful. We both knew each others, so then again, who is to say, which one of us was chasing and which was running. Who is to say, who caught up first. 

This wasn't meant to sound dirty, and conspiratorial. I hold you so close to me that now I enjoy a smugness to do with buying your time, or your energy, love or care. I know that you do too, a lot more than you let on. Then where did I get involved in something that forces me to say that I'm 'In too deep.' I checked the depth before I stepped in. It was nowhere close to drowning levels, but now I'm not so sure. 

I checked the weighing scales too, they were fair and not tampered with. Then how is it that in no time my side is tipping heavier? How is it that you keep unburdening your side? That shouldn't be allowed. If you're developing baggage, why don't you let me see it? Why do you have me under the impression that I'm the one that needs to be saved? When actually I'd much rather save you. 

When we kissed today, it was a lot slower than it should be permitted. It was like you didn't want to stop, like you were gathering every sensation that you could while it lasted. So who decides how long it lasts? You, of course. You say that you're scared of how intimate we are, while we're soaking up the warm sun right across from the dazzling sea, the same one that belongs to the entire city, but somehow uniquely belongs to you, after hours of only soaking up everything we could of each other. Like it would be the first and the last time that we could give and take so much without a soul watching, listening, intruding. I laugh and say it's because of my warm personality that you've never done this with anyone else before. You don't contest that.

We're interlocked in a very fitting way. You make me whoever you want to make me whenever you want to, without changing the essence of me. And I enjoy these escapes from me. Especially because I can remember these experiences that almost seem like out-of-body ones. Sometimes what would work best would ensure that I could take you someplace else too, and I get the feeling that I already do. But it scares you to admit that I have the power to do that. And the novelty of this all scares you out of your skin, and I can see it while I'm watching you watch me. It's unnerving but I'm filing these memories away because something tells me it's all I'm going to have left of you. And it's not much. But it should suffice. 

Nothing would have to change this if it wasn't what you were set out to do, and what I should be setting out to do. So just in a few weeks, I'm going to lose something special, something beautiful and something I didn't think I would ever have, only because it's so free of the shackles that usually accompany something so pristine. And you know what the worst part is about losing something that's like home to you? The fact that you know exactly when you're going to lose it and even worse, that you're going to be putting away the next decade of your life on hold just waiting for it to return. After all, it's home.

TickTockTickTockTickTock...

From Spring, With Love.

"Unanimously chosen song to be entered here"

Dear Gorgeous Seasons,

The only souls that I can remember being constants through the oscillations that my past forty-eight posts have been, are, as a matter-of-fact, the only ones I haven't written about. I guess that only re-asserts the fact that the ones that are the closest to your faint heart, the ones that have been life-changing, the ones that are absolutely impossible to do without, are the ones you tend to overlook. Not because you care for them any less. But because you care so much, that somewhere over the years they became a part of you. 

They became the second layer of your skin. 

They became every alternate breath. 

They became half the pain you felt.

And double the joy.

I call them souls, because no other term, could even strive to describe the connection. I called myself 'Spring' because nothing else would ensure that they would follow successively, and that the cycle would repeat. It's reassurance you know. Beautiful habits like them, die hard. 

I'm going away. I know it's not half as dramatic as we're all making it out to be. But that's just how we roll. I'm waiting for one of you to slap me as soon as after you read this. But I'm willing to risk it. :)

To Summer,

I swear, just as I typed that, a gush of warmth went through me, and a cloud of tears blurred my laptop screen. No. It's not that strange defect my screen has. I think you're the one that brought this about in the first place, so in a way, you are to blame. When I first met you, in my long pink skirt that's gathering dust somewhere now, I didn't feel any sparks. I didn't think we were going to ever even share a cup of coffee, let alone sob stories, most cherished wardrobe items, laughter and complete lives. If I had to pick my own teacher, someone who could guide me through everything even when I just didn't want to budge, it would be you. It would be your incomprehensible bundle of energy, warmth and adrenaline that makes you so full of life, so brutally honest, so perfect that you would pick out your own flaws and sit with them for days with a needle and thread and then pick ours up for all the serious patchwork to be done. And once you were done, we shone bright, because you picked the prettier embellishments for us. But somehow you were the most gorgeous, I don't understand how that worked. When we picked you as the season right after me, I was jealous because you got to be the name of my most favorite character. But I'd only let you have it. Because truth be told, you're a much better character than even she could ever be. Also because she wasn't the one that smacked me hard on my head when I had tears pouring down my face, she wasn't the one that told me to stop feeling sorry for myself, and she wasn't the one that held my hand and let our stilettos pierce through red leather sofas, alcohol being the only excuse. You were. And just thought you should know, I'm taking you and your strength, gonna store it in one big chunk of me. Yes, you can be the speaker. Forever.

To Monsoon,

Your unpredictability, caught me off-guard too. I'd expected mucky, bickering weather. Instead I got the most open-your-heart-out-and-dance-till-the-day-ends season I could have asked for. You are my happy place, and you've been around the longest. Longer than anyone has ever been. I was told to either hate you, or love you, and I would have ideally liked to pick both just so I could experience all of you, but I was told I could have only one so I chose to fall head over heels in love with you and I'm not complaining. Because you've never disappointed my love, in fact you've made it dramatic, outrageous, pathetic, sappy, grand and most of all, so bloody pure, that I've got all its worth. My eternal journal (and I'd only say that to you because you excuse all my corny-ness), that you are, always wanted to know every nook of how I was feeling, went scurrying there slyly like a kitten even when I tried keeping it hidden behind layers and layers of curtains, hidden in the dark. Slowly the darkness went. And then all the fabric. Sometimes while chatting with you, with our feet propped up on the Barista table, or our shutting out of hundreds of people in the madness that is our college, or while stealing tequila, or even while being engrossed in Music and Lyrics, I couldn't tell which one of us was which. I could as easily be you as I would let you be me. In fact, I have a feeling, you might be a better me than I ever was. I'm taking you with me, just because I want to do some real living, with a hint of mystery, a dash of refreshing thoughts and a dollop of what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude in it.

To Autumn,

Full-stops. I couldn't get past them in your life, for the longest time. But once I did, boy was I glad! Beauty in it's truest form, and I didn't exaggerate, although I know you're already thinking that I'm full of shit. Ironically leaves are the most beautiful when they're falling off their life-support system. I look at you and I'm calmed. Soothed. And somehow feel sheltered and protected. Even though, I just want to drop everything and shield you every time I can see something approach you, anything even mildly capable of altering your nature, and more often than not I see it much before you do. You're transitional, dear autumn, but I want to know how you still manage to hold your own. I'm mystified and charmed by your capacity to keep everything bottled up and not let it spill out of the safe valve that you keep it in, out into an audience that would never appreciate and understand the intricacies of so many things close to your heart. I'm glad that when you picked the recipients, it was us. Because your stories, your thoughts, and your concerns are precious. And I don't understand how nobody saw that before. I could have you around me and my mundane life for days, months and years at an end without feeling the need to fill the gaps of silence with any words. But I would probably burst into uncontrollable tears the moment you were removed. You are my ego with a mind of it's own, and you know when to boost me and when to bring me down and somehow amidst all the smoke, boys, the city that's our launch-pad, and the emotions that are our backbone, you managed to trick me into making you my favorite song, just the one that I'm never going to get sick of. Be transitional, but please don't shift, because I wont know where to find you. In my head, you can do no wrong, and even if you do, I could never punish you. For now, I'm taking a little bit of you as my balm.

You compose my years, my life, and define everything that is even half worth defining. It scares me to think that this is the first word in our goodbye sentence. I shudder to imagine, hypothetically, what my life would be like, if I couldn't so much as sense even one of you around. The only existences that I can shut my eyes and picture if ever I wanted to be comforted. The only forces that will keep me going, no matter what. The elements that come together to form the most beautiful tapestry that anyone has ever seen, so much so that I would think it a joke to trade it, even for a second. There's probably a reason why God made four basic elements and directors put four leading girls in every chick flick (I'm sure there's more meaningful stuff to the number four but this is as far as we go). I love you all. More than I am capable of loving. More than I love myself... And that's a first. :)

That's it. I'm not going. 

Soul-Splitting Love,

Spring.

Home

"Tell me your secrets,
And ask me your questions
Oh let's go back to the start.
Running in circles; coming up tails
Heads on a silence apart."- Coldplay


Dear Knight in Faded Armor, 


Your attire was always too uncomfortable and uninviting for me to form any bond with you that went beyond awe and admiration. It kept me at arms length, and soon I learnt, that that was exactly how you had always intended it to be. 


It's been a long and painfully stretched out 25 months. But like I've been repeatedly told recently, I've come a full circle. But this time when we met, you had your guard down, probably knowing that two people can never repeat the same mistake. Two people can never really form anything when they once tried, and effectively failed. Unassuming.


You rendered yourself malleable. Let our interactions, physical, verbal and on so many other intangible levels, take their own course. I guess we've learnt not to stop and contain something pure, and beautiful when it finds its way to you all on its own. We're not ashamed and we don't think ahead of ourselves. How could two people transform so much and not see it until the entire, drastic transformation has fully taken place, even while they've been in each others' peripheral vision the entire time? 


I can call you a friend. And with such warmth, that I suddenly feel light. You're slowly guiding me through a crowd, while your hands stay firmly on either side of me. And you retract them just in time, so I don't get too dependent on the support system that you are. You tell me that kissing me is like walking, talking, eating, or sleeping. It's comfortable beyond measure, but it's all that you need to do to continue breathing. I look up to you when you level life out in front of me, and in the next moment chide you for not knowing when to stop. 


I try deciphering why you push me so much for my own good, but stop short of trying too hard. I try understanding the amused laughter, when you push me around and get me childishly agitated. I try to reason why I don't worry about not seeing you ten years down the line, or why everyone around us, intimate and distant, has formed something out of us. It's something I see too. And it's something that makes me smile. At the time of the shining armor, and the damsel distressed by her own notions, we challenged the time and ended up with bitterness. What we share now, is as good as a sad smile. There's irony in the happiness that we've created in a tiny bubble and don't know what to call. So instead we focus on enhancing the minutest of details that compose this bubble. Rush of blood to the head.


I don't know the answer to that question that repeats itself in my head. I don't know why. I don't know why we can mould and emote and be ridiculous and laugh at how non-ridiculous it feels. I don't know how we end up in one place from another. I don't know how I can bear with you being obnoxious or how you can deal with little subsidiaries of my life. I don't know how we ended up there that night or how we continued feeling and becoming more and more a part of the already formed foundation without much changing. I just know that I don't want it to be taken away from me. Or for that matter, what I would ever do if it was. 


More often than not, I have not heard of very many happy endings to something this beautifully untouched... Just saying.


Love,
The Equally Vulnerable.

Just Mystifying Conformity

"They tell you where you need to go
Tell you when you need to leave
They tell you what you need to know
Tell you who you need to be

But everything inside you know
There's more than what you've heard
So much more than empty conversations
Filled with empty words"- Switchfoot


Rights of admission reserved. 

Contorting that a little bit, admitting something is one of the hardest things to do. So reserving the rights to it, doesn't make life any simpler. For you of course. Everyone else is always trying to make you 'admit' to something. Doesn't matter if it's true or not, just admit it. And you, poor, cornered soul, admit whatever there is to admit anyway, just because it may be the right answer. But it never is. It changes the face of your interrogator within seconds, almost like the light changed from a calm blue to a piercing, hurting red. As for you, the admission suddenly changes everything around you. Just like I'm contorting the initial phrase to base my pathetic rant/argument on, your surroundings will start merging, then distancing, amalgamating, then solidifying, discoloring and then forming their own unusual palette. All of a sudden, you don't know what's the truth anymore. You don't know how you felt in the first place and how you feel now. And whatever you feel, is it a stand-alone thought, unique to your mind, or an amoeba created with now-there-now-not-quite thoughts of these ever-changing minds around yours. How in that case, are the rights reserved with you, pray tell? This is what it actually meant, not on placards and the back of VIP passes, but in the foundation of a social disaster-scene. Reserved with whomsoever shotguns. Shotgun.

Let's not be social monstrosities and lead our own lives and stop drawing invisible lines for others in our heads, and then just conveniently forget to inform them about them. Let's stop becoming unbecoming property assumers on another frivolity-through-life companion. Stop. Let me be. Let it be pure, and plain sweet. And comforting. What will it take for you not to take it away?

500 Days Of Each Season.

What happens when occurrences in your life, one after the other, do nothing but confirm, more and more, that you were, are, and in fact always will be, an outsider. What's worse, is when you find out that you're on this side of the glass window, somehow still intact but probably on the verge of shattering, only because of your naivety and sheer innocence. Or maybe it's just a skill you acquired somewhere along the way, of blindfolding yourself with an invisible emotion every time you thought something was coming at you, that didn't quite fit, or the time for which wasn't quite right, or it wasn't quite as bearable as it should have been. Quite. Quite foolish you'd have to be.

When you're in love, you're supposed to be a fool. Why? Because it isn't reality. It's a fantasy. One that was created as per your own convenience, and composed of your little, fragmented obsessions at the time. But nobody ever talks about how foolish, and vile life itself can be. How foolish you could be while undergoing the process of 'growing up.' But sometimes the process stagnates. And you feel like you'll never learn. Like how many times could you possibly suffer, until the suffering teaches you a lesson. Like how much could you possibly endure, until the last vein connecting your heart to your brain is yanked out. Limitless.

I'd stay a little while longer, if only I could be assured that this time, or the next time, or the one after that, will not end in tears and severe reconciliation of not just the surface skimming factors, but of the soul. 

I'd stay a little while longer, if only the truth was told to my face, and with a trust I couldn't look away from. 

It's like it was said in one of my most favorite movies, of all time. Every time we look back at something we're having a hard time recuperating from, we're probably only looking at the good stuff. The next time you look, look a bit more carefully. 

As I said, I'd stay a little while longer. But that's only if I thought there was something more this place had to offer me. If only it hadn't taken and given to me everything that could have possibly been taken or given. If only my life could turn out the way it had to in the duration of my favorite movie, not necessarily with the same script. If only I could sit here all day, not bother about frivolities that take up my vision, touch and taste, and watch this movie, some brain waves intact. Some nourishment intact. And then... Summer. And soon. Autumn. Throw in a certain Monsoon will you. 

"The scars of your love remind me of us
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all
The scars of your love they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling..."- Adele

Bleeding White.

"If I don't say this now, I will surely break
As I'm leaving the one I want to take
Forgive the urgency, but hurry up and wait
My heart has started to separate"- The Fray


She looked at him with an innocent face, the eyes inset with a contrasting wisdom. Portraying the depth of those which had seen too much, and felt more pain, than is customary for a delicate being of twenty years. She read too much, and understood too little. She bought what was sold, and kept it close to her heart. Unaware, that the sharpest weapons should be kept the furthest away from such an ornament of consequence. Yet, ornament it was. Fistful of blood. 


If only I could stop watching you. Deciphering what wasn't meant to be deciphered in the first place. 


Tenacity. Who knew it was an art of the immeasurably practiced. To her, it had always been something that came naturally, through everything that she could derive passion from. Only that now, it had to be applied in the opposition. Velocities, friction, speed, rate and time. The physicists of the world could be put through some strenuous tests, if her little mind, body and soul were to be believed. 


You just said no. So was it just for me? Why such preferential treatment of the most negative order? Why can't I be that girl? Shouldn't be so difficult to answer...


She makes her way through the clear space that still manages to tangle her, and make its way to where it matters the most. While she's walking, little salt lines appear, almost magically, on her smooth cheekbones. Purity can so often be misjudged, and even more often made dirty. Which one is it going to be? Because let's face it. It can be either a life of anonymity, or the one that you're leading, beautifully ugly. She never knew what to choose. Reason enough that she landed herself those eyes. Big, light and beautiful. But you still don't want to own them. 


I might die. Would you care then?


He had a million other lives to live, while she lay still, begging for just one. Bathed and devoid of everything but him. 


Probably not. 

Being synonymous to unpicked.

Don't believe.
It's a vicious thing, this love.
It makes you believe, it makes you trust.
It clutches onto your throat and claws its way upto your head, and pounds its way down to your heart.
It tears you, and rips you apart, into a million shards.
Of glass.
Of disbelief.
It cuts you and discards you in a bin of life that you never thought you'd have to see.
Free. Freedom. An impossible attainment. Let me be.
I don't want you anymore. I just need you. I need you to make me feel wanted. 
No. To give me a reason of existence again.
I could make any of your kind do that. But I picked you. And let go of a tiny detail. You didn't pick me.
He picked. Even HE picked. Put all my convictions to shame. Karma. But I'm ok. I promise.
I'll make it go away. Despite my seams of pathos and desperation I'll make your doubts go away. But now I have to go away.
You're wrapping me in unique sheets of isolation. And then hooking me up on the walls of your convenience. You're picking, choosing and deciding and it's nothing that he didn't do to me before, him the one with the option of not having me as an option. Or him, the one with the month to spare. Or him, who snapped out of it just in time and didn't inform me.
I'm used to it. But it's a used I don't want to be. 
A habit I don't want to keep.
I hate this. And I secretly hate enjoying this part of 1 a.m. tears and Classic Milds when I prefer Benson Lights so I just throw half of it away and hope the guards downstairs don't complain. When did it get so bad. That I made peace with my own absurd prerogatives?
It got here today. And I despise today. I want to despise you, if only I could. I'll attend my 8 a.m. lecture and hate it. Stand in the foyer two and a half hours later, and live, then want to relive, the pain. Let you in again just so you can capture me on film. Publish and freeze. Because those are the only moments it's not about your 80-20. I want a 100, and I know that when that happens. It wont favor me. 
The realization, is cutting its way slowly through the point where my wrist meets my palm but I go on, and i just. don't. stop. Only now. Make that 4 seconds worth of rest.
Blink, blink, blink. No sleep. Girls who care too much for their own good, are too far away for mine. But evoke gratitude nonetheless. I can't even dial you any longer. Because you're dreaming. And I just wish I was too.


Good night my almost lover. Summer 2012, wish it were here already.

Dance this life away?

"Tides they turn,
and hearts disfigure.
But that's no concern,when we're wounded together."- Jason Mraz

Wake up one morning, in the same bed, the same house, the same you. Yet everything is different.

You don't complain about the rain anymore. The weather's not too hot anymore. Work isn't taxing anymore. And the hours aren't too short anymore. No, you're not in love. But in the prospect of being.

What happens when you've known someone for two years of your life, not so intimately, but intimate by default. And one morning they're changing the way you look at Bombay monsoons, or determining how many fits of rage, how many bouts of tears, how many shocks of happiness you're entitled to in a day. Or two. Or more.

You might want to get out of the situation. You might want to stay. But it's not upto you anymore. And when it was, you didn't even know you were in the situation.

I don't remember things being this complicated when I was sixteen. Then why do you lie to me and tell me that this is going to be just as if we were sixteen?

All I want to do is hold your hand, when no one's watching, snuggle upto you after a much too intoxicated night, watch every little movement of yours, while you stay focused on Paranormal Activity, with your arm tightly wrapped around my stomach. Watch you whisper to me that I'm beautiful, at the break of dawn. Lie, just for a cup of coffee, benson lights, and you. Steal, looks and smiles, and private dances, in a crowded club. Exchange lives, exchange breaths, exchange souls and still stay intact.

Has it really been a week? It feels like a lifetime. Much too long for you to have been an impervious backdrop to the scenes in my reel of life and not have said a word until now.

Then why is it that when you chose to speak, and step out of every little frame of anonymity, to finally make me see you, you also brought with yourself a window to my old life, the ghosts that refuse to stop haunting. I want you without the memory of my mistakes. I want you without you being hurt or scared, of being you again. I want you, fearless.

I want you, and I don't register the thoughts of others, because when I look at you, I hear laughter, and a friendship, that at least in my head, I forged when I was sixteen.

If only I'd met you then. If only I'd stopped myself. But you're in ink now. And I'm too far along.
"
Encore.

Plausible Deniability

"It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it's what we say to ourselves about what happens."

Vande Mataram.

2nd April, 2011. I was there. Wankhede, Mumbai. My country, meri jaan. I love you so much. :')


Historic.

At Night It All Comes Rushing Back

"Grab your bags, and a picture of where we met."- Matt Kearney


Where all I crave anymore is to be held gently, whispered to, reassured, and calmed. All I'm left with is wide spaces, an empty heart, and a brimful of hurt. When someone's superfluous you know what to do with them. But what when someone puts it on. To be superfluous just to escape the reality of pensive and brooding. The pain is going. Your Facebook profile is dull and is somewhat consoling. I haven't seen you or spoken to you, in over a month. It's getting better. It's getting better with each passing moment. Until I see her. It's a stabbing idea of you moving on. Not on to an imaginary entity that I may have to never see. But someone I have to spend another year with. While you're off. Making it worse or better, whichever. I don't mind being a picture of something I always, not quite so openly, looked up to. A mirage of perfection, an unfathomable intimidation, a series of quotable connotations, an unhealthy intoxication, and a star liberally dusting off its stardust. A wide-eyed, minion-like starlet you chose. Just because she was a poor reflection of a new price-tag. They're all the same thing. Length matters, so does depth. Breadth, for me, has always been something of a useless parameter. And while you could have enhanced both, you picked the 'float factor.' Something that'll get you by in life, but that's about it. At the risk of contradicting my non-tutorial stance, maximize your potential. And you'll thank me forever. Very unlike me, this time away from you, I have spent reconciling, re-emoting, and most importantly, re-surfacing. I'm making me proud. You would have been too. My new dubious diet, holds a lot of promises, but it is for me to wait and see. In some ways I'm hoping it'll drop me off at your doorstep. And in more ways, I'm hoping you'll let me in. If wishes were horses. I secretly know you're watching. Reading. Deciphering. Social networks don't keep much these days. Touching a million galaxies and back. That's me. Auras and fake models of the real stars, are sometimes more real, and many times more beautiful. Then why rely on reality when my make-believe world is a perfect shade of fuchsia? I'm preparing for my trip to the world of organza, tulle, ruffles, and gold. Wishing, again, that halfway through, you'll forget and forgive and even apologize. I don't know if I can start over. But I want you to want to. This came to me in my sleep. Away from my glittering world. That's got to mean something, right?


A to A.

Double-take.

There is no beauty, no transformation, as the one that stubbornly, vengefully, emerges after a spurned love. It is of the spurned lover. 

For The First Time

She's all laid up in bed with a broken heart
While I'm drinking jack all alone in my local bar
And we don't know how we got into this mad situation
Only doing things out of frustration

Trying to make it work but man these times are hard
She needs me now but I can't seem to find the time
I've got a new job now in the unemployment line
And we don't know we got into this mess it's a gods test
Someone help us cause we're doing our best

Trying to make it work but man these times are hard
But we're gonna start by drinking old cheap bottles of wine
Sit talking up all night
Saying things we haven't for a while, a while yeah
We're smiling but we're close to tears
Even after all these years
We just now got the feeling that we're meeting
For the first time

She's in line at the door with her head held high
While I just lost my job but didn't lose my flight
But we both know how we're gonna make it work when it hurts
When you pick yourself up you get kicked in the dirt

Trying to make it work but man these times are hard
But we're gonna start by drinking old cheap bottles of wine
Saying things we haven't for a while, a while yeah
We're smiling but we're close to tears

Even after all these years
We just now got the feeling that we're meeting
For the first time

But we're gonna start by drinking old cheap bottles of wine
Sit talking up all night
Saying things we haven't for a while, 
We're smiling but we're close to tears
Even after all these years
We just now got the feeling that we're meeting
For the first time
For the first time
Oh, for the first time
Yeah, for the first time

Oh these times are hard
Yeah they're making us crazy
Don't give up on me baby
Oh these times are hard
Yeah they're making us crazy
Don't give up on me baby
Oh these times are hard
Yeah they're making us crazy
Don't give up on me baby

Oh these times are hard
Yeah they're making us crazy
Don't give up on me baby


-The Script

Lost Music, Found Lyrics.

"Show is over close the storybook, 

There will be no encore."

-The Verve Pipe

What happens when all your life you've chased after something and it's always eluded you? Does it lose it's charm and luster in your eyes, with time? Or does it become that much more coveted and irreplaceable? You're doomed if it's the latter. 

Love. Boy, I hate that word. 

The one thing we want more than anything else. The one thing we wish were permanent and is the least of all things permanent. Is not to love. It's to be loved. And how hard could it be right? You can love. So why can't he? You talk to him about his passions, fears, ambitions (or the lack thereof). About his football and how he once had a serious injury. About how he likes his food bland. About parallel lives and parallel worlds. Of dreams, attainable and attainably-unattainable. About Blood Diamond and how you've never seen it. About music you don't understand. About pseudo intellects. About drugs and foolish theories. About tobacco and quiet nights. About loving 500 Days of Summer and never wanting it for yourself. And you listen too. 

You look absolutely gorgeous when you put on a dress and dapper heels. You match him step by step and just stop short of overstepping your femininity. He loves that. You take his breath away each time you choose to flash your wit or let down your hair. He loves that too. Then why can't he love you? 

Tricky isn't it? Beautiful, subtle, passionate, crazy, smart, funny, and everything just a fortnight ago he told you he saw in you and loved. But he just didn't love you. I don't get it either. I don't get what twisted, cruel act of fate makes you put yourself and your heart right out on the line each time and then have it lashed at with such fury that it takes aeons for it to revive and rekindle even one-fourth of its warmth back into you. 

I stay up late mugging up lines about the Indian Economy and straining to see the lace details of the latest Dior booties, at the same time, and somewhere in the middle, it hits me like a punch in the belly and almost laughs at me while it watches me reeling under the pain for some ten endless minutes of excruciating torture. This love. 

I'm still running the treasure-hunt marathon. Just taking a time-out to submerge myself in this city, its odor, to make it's eccentric life run through my veins (precaution: side-effects may include erratic bleeding), and to forge a lifelong sisterhood and superfluousness. 

So maybe I'll find the lyrics to my music. Maybe it'll add meaning and depth to some wordless tunes. Maybe it'll make something only shiny plastic, actually beautiful.

Keep running girls. And watch out for the speed-breakers. (:

Malice In Wonderland.

While everyone was busy falling in love. I fell in hate. Hate for myself. Disgust for the life I'd come to live. And a conscience that didn't just prick. It stabbed until I was bleeding repugnance. An abhorrent picture of someone who lost all sense of being and belonging, somewhere along the way. I feel stripped. Of every hint of ignorance I'd grown to be comfortable wearing. Of every little nuance of innocence I could once relate to. Of vesture that may not have been glamorous, but it hid me well. From jealousies, temptations, malice, abuse and dark love. Basically everything that was real. That was evil. My safeguards from all of you.


Where they once promised me relief, unbounded love, selfless protection, and an unending friendship, I'm now looked at disdainfully and done away with a shrug. And if I'm lucky, a non-committal, monosyllabic reference. Fate. To say you've been cruel... That would be an understatement. 


I'd wanted to say more. Leak more pathos. Let on a few more of my agonizing stories. But I'm just going to tell you dear friend, that you're terribly missed. I'm slowly extracting you from my core, and it's going to take time, but I'm working on it. I'm still a childish romantic. So to say that I won't be waiting anymore, would be a lie. I'm just hoping you miss me half as much as I miss you. 


This morning somebody sent me a paragraph that I'd now like to share with you. 


"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” -Neil Gaiman


(Thank you Aman) :)

Crash and Burn.

"Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."- Arnold H. Glasgow


I set myself on fire, time and time again. Risked more than others thought was safe. Loved more than others thought was wise. Dreamt more than others thought was practical. And expected more than others thought was possible. And that's where I faltered.


People speak my mind all the time. It's untrue. But I let them. Because hell, dare I risk speaking my own mind! I have a tendency to plunge into a few moments of bliss, ignorant of the fact that while infinite moments do make up eternity, the moments themselves are not eternal. 


My mind and soul need desperately to be purged of everything beautiful and ugly. Because sure those classifications were made by me. But only under the influence and pressure of another pair. My phone hasn't buzzed yet. And I'm not even waiting anymore. I'm abstaining and rehabilitating. Just not sure if it's working. 


I'd wait for a friend, no matter how long they made me wait. Wherever they made me wait. Without so much as a complaint. Because I care. Sometimes too much. Because I love. Sometimes unrequitedly. But you've lost that place now. It's commendable how persistently you kept your efforts up. It paid off, didn't it? 


Your fellow conspirer that you probably don't even know about, lives in another tangential world. I am unaware of his thoughts, feelings, and whereabouts. Or whether they even exist in the first place. Everything starts with a roll in it. Or with the favorite alphabet J. And continues in a trance. But there's a lot more he tends to share and then bottle it up and throw it far out into the sea. Maybe another forlorn traveller finds what he disposed. I sincerely hope not. 


So while he continues choosing not to choose. And reading me incorrectly. Or correctly. Whatever. And speaking for me and taking away from me whatever I could have had even for the little while it was possible. I do not know how to thank his infallible efforts to deprive me. And his sadist self... You can continue settling for everything less(er). Settle all you want. I'll find other soothsayers, with similar pronouncements, 'now you're here, now you're not.' And face them. And try not repeating the cycle all over again.


Learn from thy mistakes. Because that's just what they are. Missed-takes. I'm looking for my perfect shot. 

Not Him?

"Lucky we're in love in every way."- Jason Mraz, Colbie Caillat.




Dear Unnamed Relationship,


I love you.
And I always will.
In some twisted, unexplained way.
Welcome back to the madness.


                      - Love, 'Saved Twice and Still Living.'

Blank Noise.

"No blinding light
Or tunnels, to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark."- Death Cab for Cutie


It's either the highest of highs,
Or the lowest of lows.
Living dangerously comes naturally to us.
Nothing is an option anymore.
Extremities conjure ghosts we banished a long time ago.
Vulnerability is not only over-rated,
It's an outright lie.
The stoics survive,
They exist. They breathe. So yeah, they live.
We're caught in the middle of hypocrites though.
Live and let live, is a lost mantra.
Moving in circles blindly,
Bumping into cliched monotones.
We didn't sign up for this.
We were told we had voices.
Incestuous thoughts and souls, pervert everything otherwise transparent.
Complexities that knot into Medusa's locks.
Look once, 
Live as a stone forever.
Fantasies garnished with Greek Gods and black roses.
Sometimes we can't tell the difference between nightmares and reality.


                               *********************************


Don't hold my heart in your fist. You think you're a preserver,
But I see blood. Murder.


You whisper my name and the winds sigh.
If I take your name, I'm in admittance.
Otherwise I just lie.


Barbaric animosities you place between us.
You're burning me in a never-ending fire.
I'm seared in a lifeless cauldron,
You're coated in a faultless frost.


Pretense has gotten the best of me.
Sadism, I'm told, now falls under frivolity.
Send me down the tunnel you found,
I have no voice,
I hear no sound.

You and I, Both. (:

Dear Bassists,


Saviours,
Please don't look us deep in the eyes and tell us we're absolutely amazing. Don't seduce us, confuse us, and seduce us again. Don't tell us you enjoy our company and don't refuse to get out of the coffee shop until thrown out only so that you can spend a few more minutes with us. Don't tell us you love our hair, fringed or otherwise. Don't kiss us like it's all you've ever wanted to do. Don't like the same music we do, have a voice like that, and sing it to us, for us. Don't look at us and smile that smile while performing on stage. It makes us fall in love with you. Momentarily. Even when you don't know it. Don't make us bare our souls and then not judge us. Don't tell us that no matter how tough we are, you still want to protect us. It makes us fall in love with you, just a little bit more. Don't be our best friends, lovers, or the ones we share an inside secret with, or an awkward hug with, or a shy smile with. Don't light our cigarettes with that smirk, even though we can't ourselves. Don't place your hands in the small of our backs and make us jump out of our skins, every single time. Don't love our dogs and make up your mind to get one yourselves. Don't treat us like we need help. We don't. Don't change your minds. Just make up your minds. We love you.


Just don't.
And then do it all over again. 


Love, The Saved.