A Little Something On Me

There is a tag going on around at Instagram, where people are asked to state 20 random facts about themselves. I remember a time when such tags were routine in the world of blogs. However, I feel, with the coming up on multiple social networking fora, where the content you write is instantly and easily share-able and tag-able, blogs have sort of gotten relegated to a secondary expression position - laborious, slightly inconvenient.

Anyway, so I wanted to do the same tag here; for old time's sake. Also, for archiving purposes. Here we go.

1. I am in love with the world of written words - I want to own it, play in it, learn with it, carve it, destroy it, reconstruct it and flow with it. 
   
2. Ammi - Letters To A Democratic Mother by Saeed Akhtar Mirza is the book which has influenced me most in life. Following it at a close second spot is a book called The Assassin's Song by M. G. Vassanji. 

   

   Saeed Akhtar Mirza

3. Faiz Ahmed Faiz is the poet who tugs at the cords of my heart most strongly, though I will admit to not being able to comprehend his language completely. 
   
4. I have always been a people's person, but that manner of existence has begun disenchanting me lately. 
5. I am crazily in love with Silver Jewellery - buy me some and be assured I will instantly fall in love with you. I am also slowly opening up to the idea of gold and bling. Dang is my favourite place to pick up gold-funky-accessories from. 
   
6. I discovered Mythology, specifically Mahabharata as a huge ocean with depth as yet waiting discovery, earlier this year. I hence started a club called Maha Varta with a bunch of mythology enthusiasts which has opened my eyes to much which would have otherwise been left elusive. 
   
7. I desire to be married to books and nature, with a cottage all to myself, high up in the hills. 
8. I have been blessed with a friend who remains with me to grant me unconditional love and support even when I am a witch. Such friends, companions, lovers are rare. They are a blessing most of us fail to understand. 
9. This blog has been dearer to me than most journals I have written in moments of intimacy with myself. Each time I see the ticker at the right hand side move, I do a mental jig. 
10. My day job is that of a Content Strategist; but then, so are my night jobs, one  of which is that of the Poetry Editor at a forum called Positivally Cynical (intentionally spelt that way). Here, my boss is someone way younger than me, but this fine young man hides within him an ambitious entrepreneur I love seeing come of age.
    
11. I love experimenting with new flavours of tea. You want to take me out for a date? Sunset and tea, or monsoon and tea work wonders!
    
12. I was a coffee addict at one time. The incident which changed that was when I collapsed due to drinking 12 cups of coffee in a span of 8 hours. Don't ever try that at home!
    
13. I am in love with my voice.
14. If I were to venture out this moment for a holiday, I would pick between - Udaipur, Jaipur and Sattal. 
15. I go to the fanciest of restaurants to savour the fanciest of dishes from the most exotic corners of the world, but my favourite hangout remains Janpath McDonalds', with their breakfast menu served to me on rain-fed or foggy mornings.
    
16. I want to keep exploring arts - all forms of it - throughout life. Right now, playback is the weird ambition I have been day-dreaming after. 
17. I think faith is a tough concept to hang onto and that we all need our Krishna in life - living, breathing, wise entities who have something very humanly admirable about them. My Krishna exists in combination of real and imagined entities. 
18. I love getting clicked. 
    
19. I met poetry last year. It made me happy, but then caused immeasurable pain. I am trying to meet it again now, through a concept called Poets' Collective. I have no clue where it will go - but I do know that I will not try too hard again in life. 
    
20. I am trying to lose weight these days. Extra volume doesn't bother me. Alarmingly low levels of stamina do. 

Bonus - I am obsessed with the idea of becoming the flow, whatever that means. 

I would love it if the following people to repeat the exercise on their respective blogs - Achint Mathur, Manan Kulshreshtha, Neha Menon, Navin Dutta, Sudhanshu Shekhar Tiwari, Neelkamal Pandey, Yogesh Pandey, Aakriti Mallik, Kunal, Archika Poria, Varun Rustagi and anyone else who happens to drop by here. Leave a link to your blog in the comment section below. I would love to visit and know a little more about you. 

Erased

Part I - Unwritten

Part II - Rewritten

Part III - Erased

It rained today. It rained all over my story today.

It rained with ferocity. I witnessed the mad love making of rain and wind cast gloom and bliss together in the city. I had a crazy schedule and a dozen tasks to finish in remote corners of the city, but I knew to which centre my day would converge. By six, I had to be where I was yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. The first two days I spent beside the green water of a still lake, located within a bubbling hub of urban jabberwocky, were what enticing aromas of Earl Grey were made of, or what the smoky seduction of his piercing gaze was made of. The third day made the Earl Grey go undrinkably cold. It also made smoke smell like the irritation that smoke is.

I had first met him at this secluded, pretty spot beside the lake, flipping the pages of his little green diary, throwing down velvet caressed words as impalpable ripples on unbelievably still and lifeless water. His words were what he was made of. His expressions - casual, yet precise - were his weapons of choice to illuminate a moment by voicing them, or sadden the climate by withholding them. I loved listening to him - to whatever he said. So, when the next day, he was reticent (but charming as hell), even the usually garrulous girl in me felt it pressurizing to be the one talking. I could clearly not think myself saying anything half as worthy as the lamest thing that came out of his lips. I would have loved to speak the language of silence with him, but he did not know I had already been doing that since the first hour we spent together, and I did not know how to actually make this language known to him.  I was with him in my mind, and, I had a feeling, he was with himself, in his own.

I walked back to the same spot beside the lake yesterday, but he was not there. It felt odd. I walked on, sat down there, opened my diary, and scribbled whatever I remembered of the earthy countenance of his. Amicable, and inscrutable dwelt beautifully within the features which now seemed distant. I had his number, hesitantly yes, but I called. No answer. And so became the trend for my next eleven calls made over several diurnal and nocturnal hours. I slept with the trepidation that he has disappeared on me - my chance at poetry had disappeared on me. Today, amid a hectic schedule of dry powerpoints and dull meetings, I managed to find time to be fearful and indignant at the same time. How could he disappear on me?

Braving rains now threatening to be violent, I reached the same spot today as well - but he was not here. How could he be - it was raining, right? But then again, he was not here, or anywhere around. Drenched, I smiled helplessly, and leaned across to the same place where his hands had caressed mine. His fingers, rather boldly, had then curled around in a firm grip - the embrace of gestures ever so natural that I had failed to notice it till I actually did. I did not feel coy, I just lived.

Today, I felt raindrops run in a ticklish path down my neck - and I sat down, wishing, if that tickle could have been caused by him, his words that touch. He could not have been here in this downpour - I was mad to think that. But I was here in this downpour - mad enough to do that.

He was glorious, sure, but undecipherable still. He was beguiling, yes, but unwritten still. He gave names to feelings I had not felt since ages, but he demanded to be erased now. He was my chance at poetry, but probably I was not his. At some core, insistent, crying part of ours, we all want to be written, but while I was writing him, probably he was sketching someone else. To think again, I was writing him, and I was sure he was writing himself. And it hurt. Hurt enough to make me calm.

I walked away, drenched. I will probably come back here tomorrow, when the sun would be up there, winking at the lake. However, I will not forget him not being here when it rained, and when it was dark, and when I was alone, searching for even the tiniest reflection of his. He will probably be back here, but he will not be back here.

As I said, it rained today. It rained all over my story today.

Clicked by Aaqib Raza Khan