Colocalization

The green dot shimmered inside the cell,

Encapsulated in its own little organelle.

Fading across barriers, swallowing the plasm,

Apposing the membrane, chasm by chasm.

It looked so beautiful in its proud stance,

Alone but espoused in endosomal romance.

It advanced in my cell, acidified and blown,

Collecting membrane for what it called home.

But despite its amorosity with fellow inmates,

It stayed true to its discrediting, lysosomal fate.

Whilst the lysosome stood still, waiting by bay,

Unmoved like the devil, athirst for prey.

It provoked my endosome by a sojourn so mellow.

That my gullible green flashed into a yellow.

There! It fused unto the red!

And I see more colors--

But now it’s dead.

Permanence

The leaves shall fall and crackle beneath thy feet,
But the wood that begets shall stay mighty strong,
Even when the snow cripples unto the heat,
The branches shall wave and whisk, "So long!"

Inspired by this wonderful poem by Aman Khanna:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/aman-khanna/memories-from-change/10150897588896570

Step-down reaction

I am me, and then there is my shadow.

Following me, grazing the ground I once walked on,

And perpendicular to it am I,

Not me anymore, I am the shadow of my shadow,

Buried inside that ground my shadow grazed.

I am me, and then there is my shadow, and then there is the shadow of my shadow.

I step down on the staircase of my own shades.

Death by Violin

He played his violin with the passion of a fanatic,

Cutting through the strings with a swipe of the bow,

The agony and pleasure resounded on his face,

As his fingers shivered on the edge of the row.

I cried, I shed tears at the music,

I could feel their saltiness at the tip of my tongue,

I could see his music eclipse my body,

I could sense its quelling grasp on my lung.

Every lick he played on its neck was on mine,

Every wisp on my ear was a play on its tone

It was music I heard, for I so loved him,

When the bow was his sword,

And its neck,

My own.

Decadence

She saw his greatness in everything that surrounded him and her, which basically meant that she saw his greatness in everything. She wanted him, but she was also scared of the all-consuming nature of her respect for him. How could she want, and hence hope to achieve, the very thing she knew was her unreachable ideal?

She thought of this day after day. Her all-consuming respect for him slowly transitioned inward, delipidating her like a flesh-eating bacteria, sucking her existence into the void of her, or rather his being. It drove her mad. She stopped eating, drinking, sleeping.

She loved him so much that she wore herself off.

Rather, she loved him so much that she wore her love off.

And then he died, but she had already been too dead to notice.

Unfinished

The softness of the velvet peeked unto my fingers and I knew that I loved that feeling.

I knew I would spend days caressing its flesh and inhaling its warmth.

I knew I would brush my toes against the bottom and tease myself into loving it even more.

I knew I would strip naked so that every curve of my body pranced in its fiber.

I knew I would bury my face in its folds and cry my worries out,

Only to know that it will absorb my tears and shower me with its softness.

But alas, I did not know that one day, it would rain,

And you would walk into my life.

I am the Leaf

The rose rests upon the stone.

Its softness seeps through the hard surface,

Its color branches out into the dull background,

Its boundaries recede as it hoists the flagrant leaves, which cut though what you thought was imperishable.

The rose is not my only being.

It is my Trojan Horse.

For I am that leaf that can destroy you.

Photo by Samar Khanna. Check out his awesome page at https://www.facebook.com/ColoursOfLazy

The Wandering Eye

The wandering eye

Met with my

Disguise.

And recognized me at once.

The wandering eye

Was exceedingly shy

Of my

Reality

Would it fall in love with me hence?

But alas,

The wandering eye

Was disgusted by

This lie

That I

Devised

To mask the beauty that made it shy.

I loved the wandering eye,

But alas,

I

Was too perfect, or too flawed

To try

And make it stop

From wandering by..

Animal Farm, except with rocks, and the ending they deserved

There is a rock that dances on the edge of the roof, and it is hollow.

Then one day, little rocks start falling into it and follow the big rock’s dance routine.

They fall into different sides of the hole. They are independent, but driven by the movements and rhythms of the larger rock.

Till one day, when they swivel and gyrate and land up together in the middle of the big rock.

The balance is disrupted.

It falls.

And only the little rocks survive.

The Persistence of Memory

Time stopped, and yet the clock ticked

Inside the little bubble where nature persists.

I froze, and yet my mind clicked

Inside my head.

Beauty

I went into a room of mirrors, to a room of millions of mes,

Where we were all the same, but for our personalities.

Now fall in love with me, and I’ll know it to be true,

Choose my image, and I’ll rescind my love for you.

Inspired by:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/01/survival-of-the-prettiest-nancy-ectoff/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffercbd8b&utm_medium=twitter

Myoclonus

Every waking hour, I think about her,

So right now, I’m not.

Right now, I’m on an island, where it is raining carcasses,

And a giant stands in the middle, trying to absorb the sea from around the land,

While I cycle around the periphery, trying to pedal fast enough to shield the water.

Right now, the raining carcasses are hindering my attempts,

And the giant is slashing the throats of more and more people to produce more and more of them,

Which he flings into the air and they shower into the sea and splash the water that the giant collects in his palm.

And he laughs, while I cycle.

And then, I see her.

And I feel the pain.

My foot looks to pedal,

But now, I’m the rain.

Apocalypse (a short story)

It was getting hotter. There were people at the equator who were trying to run from the inundating water. And then there were people at the North Pole, who were trying to annex to their piece of land, the ice; the ice that was slowly melting and causing the aforesaid inundation at the equator. All in all, the world was coming to an end.

I was amongst the 50 who were floating on a block of ice at the North Pole. We were all holding on to dear ice, or life. There was exactly a square foot of ice for each one of us. The lucky ones were towards the centre, where the ice was melting gradually, and the sun wasn’t directly overhead. At the periphery were the ones whose end was near-er. They were more scared. They were holding their little children in their arms, trying to save them from the apocalypse. They were covering their eyes and ears to protect them from the sight and sound of death. And all I could think about, from the comfort of my spot in the middle, was that that square foot of ice held two lives.

I also had the advantage of being tall. A twist of the head and a panoramic view of all the other less privileged 49.

I could see the ballerina, who stood on her toe till her spot melted and she drowned.

I could see the pundit, who closed his eyes and prayed till his spot melted and he drowned.

I could see the scientist who was calculating his time of death till his spot melted and he drowned.

And I could see the fat man whose spot broke off from the mainland and drowned with him.

The man at my side nudged me. “I never had a good friend in my life. Will you be my good friend?” I nodded. And for the next three hours, or should I say 30 people, he told me the long story of his life. How he was bullied and how he relented, how his father died when he was six and how he made a living out of shaping shrubs. It was slow torture. But when the world is ending, it helps if time passes slowly.

A teenage girl on my other side tugged on my pants. “I never got kissed,” she said. “Would you kiss me?” I nodded. I picked her up in my arms, and gave her a kiss on the lips. Her cheeks got flushed with red. I kept her down. Still red in her ears, she looked up and said thank you. I smiled. Another 3 people passed.

2 people later, the old lady behind me patted my buttocks. A twist of the head and I could see her small fragile body, and her wrinkly face smiling away to glory. “I never had a son. Would you be my son?” I nodded. “Yes, mother”, I said. Her life was complete. She died right then.

Her death was a source of error in my units of time.

4 people later (or 5, if you include the dead old lady), the schizophrenic on my front turned to look at me. “I knew Abraham Lincoln is still alive!” he said, looking up at me. I nodded. “Nobody has ever expected me to be president. In my poor, lean lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting,” I said.

The schizophrenic’s purpose of life was complete. He went hysterical and pushed 6 more people into the water.

Damn. Another source of error. And then he died. Another.

Now it was just me and the friendless man and the teenage girl.

Their spots melted and they drowned.

It was just me now. And my square foot of ice. My own little space under the sun. I had never owned a house. Here was a piece of land that was entirely mine, floating on a liquid cemetery.

I had lived life to the fullest. I had visited the places I wanted to visit, dated the girls I had a crush on, made a job of what I loved most. I had no regrets. I had lived on my own terms.

And there it was: the realization that even in my last moment, I was going to live on my own terms.

There was no waiting.

I was going to die on my own terms.

I jumped.

Prison Break

It was 1993.

I stood in front of the mountains and took a long breath in an effort to inhale the beauty in front of me. The mountains seemed like they were falling backwards onto a sheath of light, and the light was splattering along their edges, resisting in pain whilst giving birth to rays. The hills seemed so black, and yet I could distinguish shades of blackness in the contours of the rocks that reflected the falling light. The exhilaration that I felt at witnessing such beauty was, however, neutralized by a fear of what lay ahead. The surroundings made me feel free, but somewhere at the back of my mind, and in my throat, there was an acerbic feeling that I had committed a crime, and they were going to find me. Soon.

And they did.

I remember sitting in a van with three policemen, recalling the loveliness of that moment. I tried to thwart the stink of the men with the vestige of the smell of jasmines, and closed my eyes to escape the dullness of their brown uniforms. I was trying my best to focus on the present, but it wasn’t helping.

I consoled myself by reminding myself that I was used to living a trapped existence. Even though I had traveled to a number of places, I had always been bound to an ambition, that of making more money and getting more success. In going to jail, I felt that my life would reach a standstill, and I would be free of that enterprise. But even then, I knew I had no motility. I knew that I was about to get trapped inside a ‘chardeewari’, and the only scenery I would get would be that of Hari Nagar; that too, furrowed by the window bars.  I would have to curb my creativity, my thoughts, and my intellect in order to survive a prison environment. Complete freedom always evaded me.

I remember the railings adjacent to the road that led to Central Jail no. 4 of Tihar. They seemed to be a continuous sheet of metal from a distance, but as the van approached them, the bars untwined: the magic of perspective. After crossing, the bars fused again. As will be clear to you eventually, this was an apt representation of what was to be my life.

 Just before I got arrested, I had heard that Kiran Bedi had taken over as Inspector General of Prisons. This was supposed to be a good thing, because it was said she joined the police service because of her urge to be ‘outstanding’.

Bull shit.

The only way a police officer would be considered outstanding was if they provided maximum prison security and tortured the inmates to the extent of lunacy. Tihar jail’s motto, as described by the then superintendent of Jail no. 2, Mr Taseem Kumar, was that “…oppressing and imposing maximum restrictions on the inmates would make them suffer; so that once a prisoner was released he would not commit crimes again for fear of being sent back to this hell.” An ‘outstanding’ Inspector General would only try and elevate the situation, I thought.

But then again, this is what I thought then.

However, in my term of life imprisonment, which in India is a minimum of fourteen years, my outlook was to change. For life.

My fellow inmate was a man named Mohan. He had been there for two years, and owing to the aforementioned ‘oppressing and imposing maximum restriction’, he was nearing psychosis. He had intermittent phases of madness, in which he would howl and run around hysterically. This used to be followed by more of the aforementioned ‘oppressing and imposing maximum restriction’ which furthered the hysteria. It was an infinite loop.

One day, however, a woman in uniform walked in. She was wearing the abominable dull brown, but somewhere in her face, I could see a faint smile of genuine care. As it turned out, she was Kiran Bedi. Her walk, like that of a Satyagrahi, was to change the entire prison environment. I saw her stroll around, stopping at cells and talking to the prisoners. The bars used to make us feel separated from the outside world of the heinous guards, but in talking to her, we felt the warmth of a human touch from across the gaps.

A year passed. Mohan’s condition had started to improve. On what was supposed to be the evening of April 4, 1994, some 1000 male inmates were gathered in an open tent or shamiana and given instructions by Mr. S.N Goenka on a course of Vipassana. The ten days that followed made me realize just how mistaken my idea of freedom was. Freedom, I realized, was a matter of perspective too, just like the railing. In that course of Vipassana, I felt liberated even though I was surrounded by gigantic electrified walls. I felt a mental elevation, the kind I had felt when surrounded by the mountains. Here too, I was mildly restricted, but it was better, because this restriction was of a physical nature.

It only got better. In 1994, Kiran Bedi was honoured with the Raman Magsaysay Award. In 1996, Jail no. 5 was opened. Eventually, many meditation centres were inaugurated. Kiran Bedi was taking all the necessary steps to prompt the evolution of Tihar jail into Tihar ashram.

In 2000, Mohan died. I felt like I was staring into an abyss for a long time after that. But continuous meditation helped me calm my mind, which is why I cannot talk about it anymore with an attached weight of sentiments. Nevertheless, it was another turning point in my life. I started preferring a lonely existence, and began writing. They shifted me to Jail no. 5.

A curator called Anubhav Nath of Ramchandar Nath Foundation, in 2007, initiated art lessons for the prisoners of Tihar. One of my fellow inmates, who had read my writing, intelligently said, “You should try your hand at painting. Writers and painters have a lot in common. They both create their own imaginary worlds and prefer to live in them. The only difference is, a writer uses a pen, and a painter uses a brush.” And so I started painting.

Fourteen years had passed by then. My sentence was about to come to an end. I was painting away to glory, literally. I painted the railings, and I painted Mohan. I painted Jail no. 4 and I painted Jail no. 5. As we neared 2009, it was announced that paintings would be selected for an exhibition called ‘Expressions of Tihar’. Thereafter, I started working on my masterpiece: the mountains of 1993.

In every colour and stroke, I relived a milli-second of that day. This feeling was even better than the Vipassana, because this time, instead of fear or physical confinement, I could finally look forward to complete freedom. The day that painting sold was the day of my release. Ah, kismet.

Today, I am a writer and an artist. I am free in the truest sense of the word. I am free from ambitions and chardeewaris, I am free in my creativity, my thoughts and my intellect. I am free of my guilt and my sadness. I am free. Completely.

I am free.

And it’s because I spent 15 years in prison.

Ah, kismet.

Die the Lie

I saw awfully little of him in the shadows. It appeared as if a ray of light had spliced him through the middle and engulfed half his body, leaving the rest in the unsullied darkness. His face showed the torment of the procedure, for his one eye stared at me with pain and anguish. “Step forward so I can see you,” I said. He took one step into the light, and it spat him out in his entirety. His red curls bended it into shiny fingernails, and now that I could see both his eyes, I saw millions of other emotions bubbling in his face. He was a very handsome man, and if I too were that light, I would ensconce him for as much and as long as possible.  Spitting was a misplaced verb.

“I know you’re going to kill me,” he said, “but before you do, I must tell you that I had nothing to do with your sister’s murder.” I smiled. “Of course you’d say that.” “I wouldn’t. I am an honest man. I have killed and sinned a hundred times but I do not wish to die for a crime I did not commit.” “Fine,” I said, “Die for the ones you did.” I took out my gun.

He looked at me. “I’m not going to lie and tell you I’m not scared of death because I am.  It’s not because I’m scared of the pain. It’s because that is that one thing in this world that eludes me. No one knows what comes after. In fact, knowledge is meaningless in matters of death, because death embezzles life of it.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

“Because,” he said, “I need you to know that life encompasses death. Like light encompasses shadows. Life is that truth which readies us for the end, and death is that which rejoices in that consciousness life had by its mere ability to make us unaware. In a way, death is a lie, for it relies upon snatching the truth that life embossed into us. Just like darkness is only the absence of light.”

I gaped at him as he took a step back. “Don’t move further!” I said to half his body.

“I meant to explain to you that death and darkness are accomplices. You see half of me now, for half of me is already dead.”

Well, I’m sure as hell going to kill the other half,” I said.

I shot.

“You forget that darkness is a lie, my friend,” said a voice.

And a single hand strangled me to death.

The Constant Line

Those curves dare forsake me, they cannot cross me,

I am a tangent to their bends,

I am their lord, they bow before me,

Before they depart to faraway lands.

They go to infinities unknown, unheard of,

Those between two neighbouring dots,

And despite conquering that illimitability,

They fight to touch this master they sought.

Come, my loves, I will release you,

You are my people, my lovers, my life,

I will cross your excuse for a sigmoid,

At two points that carve the edge of my knife.

Those bloody curves thought they could betray their ruler,

I am the vanguard to their sine,

They go up and they go down,

Whilst I remain The Constant Line.

Many-Worlds Interpretation

Your bars cast shadows on my figure and sliced me into parts,

But I reached out to reality through the intermittent spaces.

You broke my heart into millions of tiny little hearts,

But they all revel in the multiplicity of my faces.

I was one with you, alone from the start,

But now I have a population within me,

That embraces.

Claustrum

Take your pumice stone of words and start to rub on my skull.

Rub and rub till my hair magnetizes,

Rub and rub till it is pulled off its roots.

Rub so you feel the friction of your stone against the hardness of my bone.

Erode so your rock glides over the smoothness of my brain, precipitating your control over my consciousness.

There, I am yours now, your touch in my, is my head

But alas, before you get to my soul--

I will be long dead. 

Keeper

His axe, it cracked my outside shell,

His words, they burnt, they made me dwell.

My semblance tore into pieces, asunder,

But he sewed this mind together, by wonder.

He

To that world he took me,

Where endless chasms rose into hills,

And the voices of the birds traversed from within my feet

Into the waves that vibrated from my sole.

To that world he took me,

Where water glittered in the shadows of light,

And the azure of the skies faded across my fingers,

Into the veins that sprang from my wrists.

To that world he took me,

Where daffodils absorbed their own scent,

And the bees carried nature’s pollen,

Into the breath that fertilized my mind.

To that world he took me,

Where my heart slumbered upon my shoulder,

And the whips of his love eased beyond my arms,

Into the lips, that were mine no more.

Paper

The paper bends on itself, fluttering in the wind.

What control does it have on what you print?

What control does it have on its colour and size,

On the honesty of your words or the art of lies?

And yet it preserves in its fibres your scent,

You forgot what you meant, but behold,

It bent.

Fly

She plucked ‘em off,

Feather by feather,

They had made her soar,

But now she knew better.

She doesn’t need the skies,

When she can own the lands,

She doesn’t need ‘em wings,

She got ‘em in her hands..

That's precisely my point

And then I realized just how small a point really is. I mean, think about it. It is supposed to occupy a vanishingly small space. It is supposed to exist, but that’s as far as it can go.  You and I see it, so it’s most definitely there, but we shouldn’t be able to perceive it. It isn’t tangible. If I were to lay my finger on it, it would disappear into the contours of my skin after which I might never be able to distinguish it from all the other points that build me. So, in a way, it’s this mysterious, unintelligible quest. It exists, but in passing. It is time itself. And if you try to capture it, it just floats away. Into nothingness. Or points of nothingness.

Draw a line segment,

Draw a shorter line segment vertically above it,

Draw an even shorter one above that,

Then shorter, shorter, shorter,

Shortest.

Draw a point.

Sharpen the pencil and draw a finer point.

Then finer, finer, finer.

Finest.

Draw Nothing.

The Five-petaled Flower

The five-petaled flower

Just swayed in the wind

And appeared as a blur

Of a lonesome stem.

The five-petaled flower

Then shed all its petals

Yet when it swayed

It appeared but the same.

Behead

The words that I bequeath are not yours to quote,

Those words belong to me, they are what I wrote.

Why do you encroach upon my thoughts

And voice the wisdom I sought?

You’re my guise, it is I you fucking feign.

You’re just the tongue, dear,

That calls me the Brain.

Naked

My hands are the link from my mind to reality,

They are but the viands of my sexuality.

They perpetuate my thoughts,

And unravel my lots,

To expose my soul to body, and finality.

I, Me, Myself

When she spread her arms to receive the world,

Her disjointed shoulders severed the balance.

Her symmetry bellowed into a gullible vacuum of reception.

She looked into the sky, and she did not feel alone,

But she did not feel safe either.

She clasped her hands to trap her strength, and the regularity

Of her figure fused unto her entwined fingers.

Her symmetry carved the sky into mirrored images.

She looked into the sky, and she felt alone,

But she knew she was the God of the only being that mattered. 

Oblivion

Before I saw the empty glass, I wondered what its emptiness would feel like.

I had sucked all the liquid from within it, such that the molecules were spaced enough to transition into air.

But that crystal did not realize that it did not hold wine any more.

It glistened more brightly than before, for I had distilled its opaqueness.

It stood there gallantly, despite me having raped it.

Before I saw the empty glass, I wondered what its emptiness would feel like.

Now I know

It did not know.

There is no art in perfection. For character is born from the lack of it.

True Love

True love is when you receive the reverence that you bequeath.

True love is when you create.

For that which you create is yours alone,

To love.

True love.

Imagine

For I had lost the hope and will,

Surrendered to the bloody drill,

Where I was none but commonplace,

With a humdrum smile and hollow face.

When had I lost my passion to live?

Placate my thoughts, forgo, forgive?

Where was that innocent gullible joy,

Of dreams of love in a virginal boy?

Why did I age across my tomb,

When I was waging to mamma’s womb?

But then my thoughts were brushed aside,

By swishing wind that proddedly pried.

It hummed to me in a monotonous flow,

“When I get cold, I stoop below.

But when I gain energy and heat,

I carry myself to a hundred feet.

I find this heat in fire and earth,

Those I conquer, beget my birth.”

It was then I found the courage in me,

To close my eyes to insipidity.

For all the vision I had needed to walk,

Was in the thought that the wind could talk.

An Ode to Van Gogh

My life is like an oil painting.

Till the colour has dried, even a glance of the paintbrush leaves an indelible mark.

But once imprinted, I can paint over it again and again to engender new beginnings.