Dream

I was walking in the city of dreams, and I did not know if I was awake or dreaming. I had wanted to see this city all along in my dreams, and now here I was, not knowing if it was a dream. I was walking in a daze, only partially alive, only partially awake. Dimly I knew I was searching for something, and that I was being compelled to walk for reasons beyond my understanding. Some obscure, long forgotten desire had driven me to roam around inthe city in a stupor, even though I had no idea how I found myself to be there. And even though I was not directly connected to the city, I was intuitively aware of ties stronger and more inexplicable than conventional ones. Perhaps the answer to that also lay in dreams, in some long forgotten memories. So I walked and walked, lonely as an invisible outcast among the hordes thronging the streets. No one looked at me and I looked at no one. I found myself walking along the dark corridors of a university where I had never studied, and yet which was bound to my destiny in the form of those inexplicable ties, all the more inexplicable because those ties had severed themselves and I did not remember what they were. Was that what made me walk? The search for those ties? The emptiness and futility I felt as I walked along told me that the only connection now lay in the ties having been broken. Nothing else bound me to it now. It had all been ripped asunder from my destiny in a far away past, alive in some corners of my past existence, living on in my memory. What drove me to it? The ghost of this past association. And I was only half awake, or I would never have gone. There was nothing. The fuzzy light of the cloud obscured sun lit up an open doorway, but the rest of the place was in darkness. The sun did not exist in those regions. There was not a soul. There could not even have been a ghost. In vain I tried to call out for someone, to the people I had known once. Only a cat came along with tail upraised. I lured it into a corner where I started kicking and showering blows upon it. The cat shrieked like a demented spirit and drove me to near madness with its wails as it bit and scratched around in terror. My hands were covered my own blood as a result of its scratching. I wanted to kill it, but after a while I opened a door and let it go. I slowly followed it into a corridor, weak and spent, where I met a gardener tending to some plants. I asked him where everybody was. But he was dumb and I could not understand his gestures. I was too weary to spend any more time on him, and I walked into the streets once again, lonely as before, as drugged and stupefied as before, like an invisible outcast among the teeming hordes. Even mother Ganges could not offer me solace; she went along her way, indifferent.

saying goodbye

Who knows what's hidden behind a goodbye,
Who knows what's hidden behind that smile,
Tears, for the times that are gone,
Or hope, for the days to come along?
The broken sundial lies frozen in time.

So much can be given in a smile,
Words heard, but unspoken.
So much can be said with a touch,
Thoughts felt, but unexpressed.
And so much can be taken away also...
And yet we dared to smile,
Look into each others eyes,
Shared our pains our sorrows our joys.
Looking up at the stars,
Hand in hand in paradise.

Now it's time to say goodbye,
But I don't have the heart to.
Goodbye is too good a word,
So I'll just say, 'Fare thee well.'

Until we meet again,
In some other time, some other place...

We shared our pains our sorrows our joys

Futile Regret

Today I went to her. Why? Because the cup looked as good as new and hadn't broken. I took it as a good omen. But I didn't say what I'd gone to say. I had been insincere enough all these years. I didn't want to be any more insincere, so I said something else instead, which wasn't anything of importance. Not a single word of importance could I say. The mammoth preparations came to nought as I felt the mammoth insincerity and the farce with which my words would be laced. I was not insincere; I am not insincere, but above all I did not want to sound insincere to her, so I ended up by not asking. I just listened as she talked about someone else in whose place I would have liked to be.... Since I cannot be, I will not look back again. I will not complain about my loneliness anymore. Life has to go on, inspite of all its mistakes. Mine, as well as hers, though along different routes which will never intersect again.

I had to clean the cup a little bit. The cup that had served as an ash tray all these days. But after cleaning it it was as good as new. I took another look. Just a little stains of cigarette ash were sticking at the bottom. I ran my finger over it, holding it under the tap, and that too was gone. I needed it to be perfect though, with not a stain, to complete the analogy. At this stage I dreaded if it should fall to the ground. It would break into fragments and nothing would bring it back. So immediately I became tender in my handling of it. And I am happy to say that it is now as good as new. That no one can guess I had treated it so roughly all these days. If it had fallen to the ground and broken, I would simply have said, "It is no use," and dropped the matter then and there, too scared to go against the winds of fate.

Again and again.