An end and a new beginning

And another one bites the dust. We are one year older, one year wiser and one year uglier than we were last year.

This was an important year. More important than I had imagined earlier. I did so much. I broke my heart twice. I failed and succeeded. I wrote obsessively. I scored. I prayed. I hated. I traveled. I got hired. I quit. I infatuated myself with a stranger. I left friends behind. I moved to strange lands. I experimented with my sanity. I gave up on forever.

Would I do it all over again if I get a chance? Probably not. Some seasons should never come back and this was one of those seasons.

But I've learned a lot this year. I learned that things don't always turn out the way you planned, or the way you think they should, and it is not necessarily a bad thing. And I've learned that there are things that go wrong that don't always get fixed or get put back together the way they were before. I've learned that good people also hurt you - no matter how good they are, at some point they are bound to hurt you too and its alright. I've learned that relationships are fickle. They should not be measured by how long you have known someone, but how deeply you have cared. And if you have truly cared for someone even for a minute, it is worth the thousand lives you are going to live without them. I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, even when you don't have people who love you.

And now I stand here in this strange city, in this awful weather, trying to figure out a direction. There are no familiar faces around to guide me, no matter how hard I try to look for them, but I know why that is. They are not supposed to be here. Its my time to get up myself and figure it out. Otherwise I will never learn.

But the good news is that once I get up and put myself together, work up the courage to turn the corner of the street I had been looking at for such a long time now, I will bump into a stranger, we will smile at each other and somehow all will be well again. Its only a matter of getting up and turning around that corner. I know I'm still a little bent, a little crooked, but I can't complain. After bearing through all kinds of abuses this year and crashing into dead ends and living through overdoses, I feel better now than I did five years ago. I might have some scar tissue, but that's alright, I'm still making progress. I hope you are too.

So, here's to another year of kicking and struggling and loving, and working up the nerve to take that turn and find out what's around that corner.

Knowing........

Suddenly, all I can think about are all the things I don't know about him. All the things I never had the chance to learn. I don't know if his feet are ticklish or how long his toes are. I don't know what nightmares he had as a child. I don't know which stars are his favorites, what shapes he sees in the clouds. I have no clue what he writes in his journal or if he writes at all. I don't know what he is truly afraid of or what memories he holds closest.

I don't know how he holds his pen or if he shakes his leg when he is waiting on something. I don't know how his breath smells like . I don't know how his hair feels like or if his hands remain hot or cold. I do not know. And I don't have enough time now, never enough time. I want to be in the moment with him, feel his body against mine and think of nothing else, but my mind explodes with grief for all that I am missing. All that I will miss. All that we have wasted.

Perhaps you can afford to wait. Perhaps for you there's a tomorrow. Perhaps you have many many tomorrow's to come that you can let the todays slide and have so much time that you can waste. But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know.

Days......

Some days, all it takes is your name. Your name that fills my heart with longing all over again. The longing that never really left me - only suppressed. And then I realize that all my efforts to forget about you are totally fruitless. It seems as if you never left me. It also seems as if you abandoned me just yesterday. I begin to smell you on me. I begin to hear your voice in my room - or whichever room I am in; it doesn't really matter anymore.

Some days, I make myself believe that you still love me and it still makes me feel like the luckiest woman alive. Then I start building so many walls around me. Vow to myself that I shall never think of you again - that you have no place in my heart but all it takes is your name to bring me back to the starting point - to make me start working hard towards building those walls. It is not fair.

Some days, I wake up in the morning and all I want to do is hear a knock on my door with your smiling face telling me that you have crossed all the oceans and come to me for the rest of time.

Some days, I believe that love doesnt really have a past tense. Its either you never truly loved or you never really stopped.

Some days, I am convinced that I am going to turn around a corner of a busy street or perhaps a park and bump into you. You will tell me that you came here for me - that there was no better place to be.

And somedays, all it takes is your name - uttered by a complete stranger in the late night hours - to make me realize that I am back to where I was years ago. I complete the circle one more time.

Cycle of replacement mein muhabbat ki replacement nahi hoti...

Times........

Best friend....

Love....

Brother....

together.....

Whose left ???? :)

My soul drifts aimlessly in times of hopelessness.
It searches tirelessly for meaning and truth ...
Yet finds no direction.

My heart bleeds quietly in times of loneliness.
It yearns to find warmth and happiness ...
Yet it somehow eludes me.

My eyes seek out visions in times of want.
They gaze endlessly through the blackness that envelops them ...
Yet they cannot see the light.

My ears listen earnestly in times of silence.
They search for familiar sounds to comfort and console ...
Yet they cannot penetrate the darkness that surrounds me.

My arms reach out frantically in times of despair.
They seek strength and compassion to enfold me ...
Yet they find nothing substantial to enwrap.

My mind cries out desperately in times of solitude.
It poses intense questions that demand answers ...
Yet there are none to be found.


My hand reaches out earnestly in these times of confusion.
It yearns to dial the number of a familiar and calming voice ...
And gratefully, regain its sanity....

But that is all it does now, yearns, but never gets.....

Together

During most nights, I stayed up and watched him sleep. I could hear his steady breaths and sometimes he would reach out and touch me while he slept. I stayed up because I only had a few days. I did not want to miss anything. His weary expressions. His breaths. His words. His eyes. The twitching of his fingers. His stray hair strands. I wanted to sear everything in my memory. I begged for this one from God and He was merciful for a few days. But only for a few days. I didn't know if I would be able to see him again or if he would ever like to see me. I didn't know if he will ever come back to me. So I gathered all the memories that I could, hoping that they would last a lifetime. I watched him sleep. I watched him eat, and sometimes he smiled. I watched him - knowing fully in my heart that I could do only that for the rest of my life.

The time we spend together, we never did make love - it was just me loving him.

So it ends............

And so it ends here................

I remember the time not long ago
When we laughed and shared it all
We were the very best of friends
Or at least that’s what I thought.
I often wonder why friendships end
What happens to sever that tie
How can someone once so close
Just wave you off with a good bye
I must have been lacking
I must have been wrong
I wasn’t the friend to you
That you were to me all along.
I thought I was loyal
I know I was true
But something went wrong
Now there’s nothing to do
A friendship lost
Is a very sad thing
The angels weep instead of sing.

Ranjha

Ranjha Ranjha kerdi ni main apey Ranjha hoyi,

Ranjha Ranjha saddo ni menu heer na aakho koi

[Repeating the name of Ranjha, I have become Ranjha myself.

O call me ye all Ranjha, let no one call me Heer]

As I hear these melodious words fill the air around me, my heart yearns for his. With my eyes closed, I hum along while my exhausted head starts to sketch him in the darkness of the night.

My heart then desires for him to listen to me sing this melody, but more than that, I am tempted to explain it to him. To explain the essence of each phrase, of each feeling that resonates in Bulleh Shah's poetry and consequently my own affection. But I have learned to control this temptation, just as I have learned to not speak of many things I wish to speak of and to share with him my truest emotions.

I know that singing these words by my bedside and feeling the love I feel, will not bring him any closer to me. Yet, I fill the air with these words.

Jal ja, jal ja Ishq mein jal ja, jale se kundan ho

Jalti raakh laga le maathey, lagey to chundan hoye

[Burn, burn, burn in the fire of passion, for its only when you burn that you turn to gold.

Rub the ashes on your forehead, so you may find some peace]

Sulagtey koyle, re koyle, ab bujhna mushkil hai...

[These burning coals - my heart, continues to burn]

Santa

This is a guest post for me from a friend of mine Isha.I did not know I was that transparent to everyone ...:)

Dearest santa,

You are known to have a big heart. So here goes Santa... if you can grant me one wish, just one, this one would be it.

My friend, she is a good woman. I feel her warm good energy running through my veins like chocolates.Santa, she means no harm and tries her best to make everyone happy but is very unhappy herself. I feel her tears in every smile. She tries to keep calm and collected and not disturb me but she doesn't realise that she can't hide from me. I am Her.

Santa, in these four to five months I have never seen so much pain. She cries all the time, by the window, by the chair, by the mirror, by the tree, everywhere... alone. And people around her think she is so strong. It's true. I've heard them talk about my friend... they say with pride... they say, "She is a rebel and one of the true woman." They look up to her in many ways and I am so proud of her. Yes I am.

So Santa, here is my wish.

Please take all the people she doesn;t want in her life in such a way that she is not responsible. Please bring all the people she craves to have in her life back in a way that they do not leave again. In a way that she does not have to push them away herself, for her sanity as well as there's.The truth is that I am not OK and I know i keep on giving her false hope to see the spark in her eyes.

She is patient, as patient as she can be, but I cannot bear to see her sitting around like a vegetable hoping everything will be OK. Please Santa. I think she is fantastic and I cannot put her through this.
Santa, give my Dida a million smiles instead.. !!

She is fed up of “whatever happens happens for good” happenings. I want something good to actually happen with her. I don’t want her to learn anymore from such happenings.

People who simply can’t stay along, almost invade into her life like twister.., stay for a while, causing things like curiosity, hope, sometimes dreams too, to whirl around her life in a perfect zoom and then suddenly they leave, only to make the place they stayed a junkyard.

Finally she hears “whatever happens happens for good!!! This is how you learn in life”. she has learned enough from all of them who did that. Can you believe, now she almost know how to quit from all kinds of problems that exist in the world, starting from whom she chose to whom her parents chose?

She is totally lost, and so is everyone around [including me]. You said god plays fair always; please ask him to consider this request of mine. I prefer not to play any game starting from now, until he assures me She will not be in the receiving end.

I can’t even make her sleep on my lap coz she will be worried that am lost. We both pretend that we are fine. If you’re free tonight please come in my dreams. I need your lap. For a minute at least, to find “the hopelessly lost myself and her”.

Love,

He writes for me-An Ode

Here comes one of the most special post of this blog. Long back I had promised you all will make him do a guest post here, remeber ? Well here it is
I am speechless right now, by this unexpected gesture.So I'll get back to you all later.Meanwhile read it and hopefully you all will get it why do I love him the way I do :)

You may not be the most beautiful person on this earth, but you surely, are one of those cutie-pies on this earth, who never think once before giving their all. You have helped in every sphere of life. You are a clear soul. You are beautiful. I don't really understand what makes you feel that you aren't. You irritate me a lot when you say that. x-( grrrr....I feel like slapping you hard when we are at disparity. Anyways, change your habit of disagreeing with me at every point. I simply hate it! Feel like nabbing your neck at such moments. :P

I will miss these days a few days later. They have been the most exciting and enjoyable days to me. I had never imagined that you would bring me happiness unbound. You know what... you have helped me at stages I would never have expected help from the most trustworthy people.

We are often at loggerheads at this, arguably, feeble stuff: "You don't understand me." Well, I do. I understand you a lot. You, probably, will never know how much. That doesn't vex me, because at unfathomable depths of my heart, I know I care. Hence, it shouldn't vex you.

Trust me... I have never found a person like you. Never! I am skeptical if will ever find one. What are you created of? What is your genesis? Human? amm... perhaps, not. Do you feed on ambrosia? I ask that because you don't seem human. You hardly exhibit virtues of a human soul. It is divine. I feel honoured to be with you, when your closest friends have either never met you, or do not get to meet you often.

Do not crumbled under the notion that I don't care, and don't get emotional. You know I am a sentimental fool. There is something I'd like to bring to your attention. You know why you are not at good terms with people around you? You are in a bad world, baby. This place lacks people like you. When they find their characteristics bickering with yours, they are bound to create commotion. It doesn't mean that you are at fault. Angels are destined to be at conflict with demons. (And you know that most people here even look like them. For instance, A*i****, *i**). Your amateurish dreams often make me smile. Your figments are so fabricated that they enable me envisage your mind and purity of your soul. Our li'l scuffles, my paranoic demands, will probably, never make me forget you. I may, somedays later, reproach 'Time' for its graduation in crescendo. I wish I could be here forever; I wish I could depend upon you forever. This post is getting on my nerves now. I can feel plethora of emotions pushing against my cornea, ready to make their way out as tears. I wish I could hold time. I wish I could take you along.