Not a drop to drink

Life does not allow me to see myself as a unity. It’s as though I’m a pack of tarot born of bizarre dreams and a feverish brain-hand synapse – a neverending pack, images that are the times of my life flying, flying, filling the sky of my existence like clamoring birds. This is why I don’t have a tattoo yet. I’m inconsistent. My chameleon skinned life is indecisive, always twitching, never in control or aware of itself.

When you’re always changing, you’re always moving. A rolling yarn loses all its wool, systematically annihilating itself in its quest to live.

I remember when I wrote of myself as a river – I was young then, not afraid of clichés, typing out my thoughts and beliefs in boldface.

As I grew up, I wrote about my excursions into the cosmic sea, adventurous, reckless, pained and hopeful.
I saw myself drowning, and the words wrote themselves before the thought itself became clear – I was a miserable little sea urchin, lost in deep blue waters, struggling to break for the surface.

And since I tried hard enough, I lunged out. The surface is not a nice place to be at. I was still not the master of my movements. The sun baked me and the waves slapped at me, apathetic, vicious bullies.

I understood that my place was below, back in the deep towards which my previous drownings had led me.
But now I was afraid. Of the dark, of the mystery that sang in my sleep, that buzzed and boiled through my blood when I was awake, tearing open my eyes and willing me to stare into the sun.

I could not face it.

The terror, and then the inadequacy. It has torn me from myself. It has transported me.

Now I am an isolated lake in some far, dead moon. Cold, still water defines me. I am crusted over with a layer of ice that glistens like the edge of a butcher’s knife. But I am weak, and treacherous. The light I steal from the heavens and reflect blinds you to the cracks that web across me. It is not safe to cross me, to get to know me though all I present to you is a surface.

I wonder now if another season will ever arrive, if the freezing crust that is my own hand pressed tight over my nose and mouth, will ever melt. And I wonder at the notions that now solidify within me. The eyes inside are witnessing the birth of an iceberg. I am becoming the impassive waters of destruction, I am creating death.
But even in my distant, self-contained misery, I cannot deny one thing. The pull of the sea. The earthly gravity that bore me demands its dues. And even from this distance, I see you. You have become the sea I long wanted to be. It’s you and your love. And my fear has doubled. It seems that I fear both you and me, now. But this ghost of myself, the icy lake in a far away moon, it does not believe it can ever return. Terror jets through me, red, bloody, blistering hot. I do not let it mar my placidity, but it unsettles me. I long to return. I long to take this chance to be what I knew myself to be, what you have shown me is possible. But I’m no longer sure if I’m welcome. I’m no longer sure if that old place of mine still belongs to me. I dam the temptation to burst through the ice, to flow, to rush, to drip into your love. I recede from you because I fear losing what’s left of pale, meager me.

Solo Cloud on Float Mode

There's something about living on campus in a residential university. It throws up some very uncomfortable, hair-splitting moments of loneliness in a crowd.

I'd internalized my mother's agoraphobia, and would usually run back home once whatever work was going on was over. And my home was sacred - I was loathe to invite just anyone in. This was something of a family hallmark, I suppose, because I feel that my home still has this aura of... well, not an uninviting quality. More of a sense of aloofness, a feeling that the front door would just like to fade into the wall.

Here, I'm often tempted to run back to my cosy little room. And do what? I brought over a couple of my favorite worldly possessions, my fortifications against loneliness and socialization. Books. Music. Movies. You'd think I'd never need step out, except to feed myself and use the big girls' room. I thought that, at any rate. 

But it's characteristic of a new life to strip away much of that comfort I derived from my familiars. 

Attempts at hurtling into the old havens of fiction and familiarity are now roadblocked by this vague discomfort. There's nothing better that the campus outside can offer me over my books and music, but its half-empty presence rings in my ears, trying to suck me like marrow out of the bone of the hostel.

I have not been an explorer for many, many years. But an impending metamorphosis is already aching in my bones... Strange that I make it sound more natural a process it is, because I'm filled with apprehension and have been puffing a slender cigarette of pessimism for a few months, now.

Echoes of the larger world are already burning like acid through my self-absorbed bubble. And I'm holding back, for as long as possible, from the paralyzing inevitability of stepping out - naked, shaking, endless.

Loneli

I was lonely, so lonely that the electronic relay of your disembodied voice, from your distant body, and apparent non-existence of your fire was so painful. I couldn't pick up your call. I was so deep in loneliness, that my chill breath was enough to freeze any vestiges of warmth that you might have puffed through the plastic earpiece.

I was a rock in my lonely need. But had it been a mood with the differentiation of a few degrees, I would have thought of running to you.
And then I would have thought of how. And the walk. And the train. And the long, long time, the waiting and sitting in a compartment so full of cross-purposes; noisy with the silence of too many preoccupied heads, trying to reassert their intentions in their own domains… i would have drifted. The currents would have pulled me away from the burning piece of flotsam in the oil-slick sea of that different, imagined loneliness.

And all in all, my offer of a distant, wispy smile, after you sliced your loveful way through strange humanity… Would have made you wish it was an electronic laugh drained through a plastic earpiece.

Tummy Ache

Sunlight glinting off the clear glass jug of lemonade pierces my eyes. My father waves at me, but I’ve already turned back to the shade. For a few seconds, I'm light-blind. I squint and slide my hand across the cool, deep grass. Fingertips touch the hem of Purvi’s skirt; I get up on all fours and shift closer to her. Her school uniform is crumpled and grass-stained – she’s always been such a slob. 

I start sticking dry ochre leaves into her baby fine wavy hair. She’s probably an elf with her pointy little ears, skin like cool, damp mud, and delicate birdlike bones. Or simply a bird. When we were younger, I used to tell my mother that Purvi turned into a sparrow and flew away every evening. Look at her now – her high cheekbones glistening with sweat, small thin hands fluttering on the grass, and her growing, ridiculous, adorable belly. 

She whispers something I can’t catch. I tilt her chin so that she’s facing me. She screams – long, and shrill. Her parents and mine rush at us from the veranda. Someone topples the jug of lemonade, and for a moment, the wet grass sparkles like broken glass. 

***

She’s still screaming as we sit huddled in the back seat. She’s squeezing my hand, and I'm so glad she wants me. A few minutes from the hospital the little bird has exhausted herself. This is how she is, she suddenly builds up to an explosion and falls back, utterly drained.

***

The white hospital corridor turns into a tube of speculation as we wait for the doctor to return. Food poisoning? Amoebiosis? At one point, Purvi’s father asks me if she’d swallowed a G.I. Joe, and I tell him she stopped doing that 9 years ago. Anyway, she would only gobble the heads. I think of how the toy heads are only a little smaller than a sparrow’s eggs.

The doctor returns, his face blank and frozen. We all look at the offering in his outstretched hands. My father faints, and so does Purvi’s mother. I take the ugly, wriggling red monster into my arms. I wonder if girls are called daddy, too.