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?