Kari And Ruth

When I'm with you, it feels so wrong, it feels so right
When I'm with you, I feel what you say, I say nothing at all
When I'm with you, I want to remember, I want to forget
When I'm with you, I want to surrender myself, I want to be free
When I'm with you, I reveal myself, I hide their true lies
When I'm with you, you understand, they interpret
When I'm with you, everything's clear, reality is blurred
When I'm with you, I rise in love, I fall from grace.

Images In My Mind

A magician conjuring up a bird from a handkerchief and then, the bird flying off into the air...like our thoughts...

Me and Shreya in a box labeled "Unbreakable"...like our friendship...

Of Cab Drivers

You know how, in movies and music videos, cab drivers are always friendly? Well, that’s what’s on my mind right now. In the video of Dido’s song ‘Let’s do the things we normally do’ the cab driver in question is a woman (ka-ching!) and not just any woman but Shahana Goswami (once again, ka-ching!). She happens to be a witness to the lives of all her passengers. When one of them gets a call confirming a job that he had applied for, Miss Goswami joins him in a little jig of joy on the beach. In another instance of cab-driver-friendliness she leads an old woman into a coffee shop whose trail is littered with memories.

In the movie ‘Bong Connection’ Parambrata Chatterjee – the latest Sector V employee to be shipped off to ‘Aamerika’ – befriends a Bangladeshi cab driver who, despite being an illegal immigrant, gets to sleep with a bevy of gorgeous women. His story is supposed to be heart-breaking…He’s always on the run from the cops and all he really wants to do is earn a living ‘honestly’ so that he can go back to Bangladesh and see his daughter again.

But in real life cab drivers aren’t anything like that. They never tell you that life is a loom. They only play stupid bilingual Punjabi-English rap numbers when you’re desperately unhappy, dying to get home and take a hot shower and craving for some time to be alone with your thoughts on the way. It just breaks my heart.

Happy Ending

“Don’t tell me of love everlasting and other sad dreams,
I don’t want to weep.
Just tell me of passionate strangers who rescue each other from a lifetime of cares.” - Joan Baez

They met like any two strangers. She decided to close her eyes on the world that she used to live in. They built an alternate reality together. She found reasons to smile about. It wasn’t love. It was the satisfaction you feel in knowing that someone will be there to bear witness to your life, laugh at your jokes, make you dream.
Then he moved away. He lives alone in a forest now. He misses her. She lives in a world where, everyday, someone wants to serve her oblivion on a sugar cube. She misses him. She knows that life is beautiful – as beautiful as teardrops on a pillow in the light of the moon. She still laughs. Lately she’s been restless. She’s been muffling the screams that almost escape her lips when she lets her guard down.
A month more must they keep the matchstick alight. A month more. And then they can bathe together under a waterfall as if they’re free. Then can she be who he wants her to be again.
Oh, Time! Listen to the silence. Let not the west wind rise yet.

Of 'Iris'

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to forget yourself? To forget what you do? Forget who your friends are? Forget what a spoon is? That’s what Iris Murdoch dealt with in her struggle against Alzheimer's disease and Judy Dench brought it to life beautifully – so beautifully that it hurt to watch it. The scene that particularly touched me was where a postman came to deliver letters and Iris had forgotten what it was that this man who brought the letters was called. When John Bayley (played by Jim Broadbent) reminded her that he was called a postman, she followed him around listlessly saying, “It’s only the postman. It’s only the postman”.
After her friend Janet’s funeral, while she and John were driving back home, she got restless and panicky and threw herself out of their car. John immediately got off to look for her and ended up falling as well. While rolling about in the dirt, he bumped into a heap on the ground which turned out to be Iris. Iris then laboriously said, “I...love…you”.It made me laugh.It made me cry.And that’s what makes a scene truly powerful.
Iris wasn’t your conventional novelist-and-philosopher. She was openly bisexual. She believed in free love. She was fiercely independent. She didn’t care what people said. In one particular scene, John woke up in the middle of the night and asked iris who she was with then. He claimed to hate her. Iris just touched him lightly on his upper arm and he calmed down.
John always remained in awe of Iris (like the rest of the world) , even when she died a peaceful death with him at her side.

If you're asking me for help-

It's hard for me to save you when I can't even save me from myself.
I'm still pretending to know the answers to the questions that people ask.
Well, I'm only deceiving the flowers in the breeze.
I'm nobody's true north,
nobody's reason to change,
nobody's season to change.
I'm only the blind man's blackness,
the deaf man's silence,
the sick man's cancer.
And one day when I don't roll anymore
I'll reach that place no one knows how to find on their own
and I'll know how I gave forever to the ones I touched and kept.

POEM TO AN ALMOST BOYFRIEND

Yesterday was everything it promised to be-

I saw you again accidentally.

You called out to me with that voice I once knew

And it brought back memories hidden from view,

From the farthest spaces of my mind-

All the thoughts I’d left behind.

I thought you’d always be there to catch me when I fall,

You’d always be there to answer my call

But when I wept for you that night in the dark

And I realized all of it was falling apart,

You closed yourself up like you always do

And I knew for sure I’d lost you.

You never touched me, I don’t know if you wanted to

But as to what it is you wanted, I hadn’t a clue.

You gave me so many subtle signs

But the truth is you failed to define

What you wanted me to be for you.

You weren’t perfect but I can’t blame you

I was too late; we both know it’s true.

You screamed out when I hurt you, but I turned a deaf ear

Now all that is past, it’s been about a year.

I still think of you suddenly in the middle of a crowd

And back to haunt me come all my doubts.

But I steady myself; I’m not as weak as they say

We’ll always have our memories; no one can take them away.

If we meet again, say, ten years from now

(I don’t know where that might happen or how)

I promise you this; once again we’ll find ourselves-

The way we used to be-on memory aisle’s dusty shelves.

We’ll make those moments special and they’ll get me through

The rest of my life without regretting my encounters with you.

P.S. You punctuate me!