A chronicle of the misadventures of a would be writer

Friday, October 28, 2011

How To Be a Grown Up

This recent past of the last few years this side of the new millennium, well it witnessed me as the 'kid'. Most places I went, the baby tag has stuck. And while the condescension tends to get annoying, on the whole it was proving to be an enjoyable experience. So much so, that I have often been accused, and not always without reasons, of suffering from the Peter Pan Syndrome.


Lately however, my belief in fairies has been diminishing and Neverland means a ranch kids should never have entered. It cannot no longer be denied that I am growing up. I loathe it; I fight it tooth and nail, I throw tantrum and I hold my breath. But it is inevitable, grow up I must. As there isn't much else I can do, I decided why not crib about it; and while I was at it why not get a few peopleto  hear it? So after this long and drawn preamble, let's get to what I am really here for: The X things (am not sure how many points am going to have) that tell you you're a grown up.


1. You get to make your own decisions: 
Yeaaeee!! I am now my own king (or queen in my case; actually let's just go with a gender neutral term) ... so ... yeaeee!!! I am now my own ruler. Wait, there's the mouseprint, it reads: your mess, you clean it up, it seems to include your room, your dishes, your laundry and your life(!).


2. You get to go on unchaperoned dates:
Oh Boi! Ever since I'd been a  thirteen year old hormones crazed teen flicks junkie, all I wanted to do was go on a real date. Forget Mom driving you and neighbour's cute son to McDonald's for a softy or making mud cakes together in the yard, this is the real deal. The candlelight, the sweet nothings, the perfect dress. The dress for which you have survived on cucumber juice all week and still had to hold your breath to get into; the dress your date probably already started taking off in his head when he saw you.


3. The loads of stuff learnt as a kid, you get to unlearn some of that junk:
Not the useful stuff like Bernoulli's principle, the 12 times table you can use the calculator on your phone for or the value of pie up to 5 decimal points. You just unlearn things that don't matter like one can kiss an ouchie go away, that "my daddy strongest" and he'll slay all my monsters; that running to mommie can still may not solve your problem, but it will make you feel better enough to face it.


4. You grow to be a wise, rational, thinking being:
It makes you understand the world so much better, like the fact that Santa Claus is in fact a marketing myth birthed by coke and there is no point being good. Or that an eye for an eye makes the world blind, so you cannot really punch your neighbour for borrowing your hand blender and returning it in pieces; even at the cost of refusing yourself a sense of great satisfaction.


5. You develop a sense of self preservation:
You know now that shiny, glowy flame is hot, you shouldn't touch it. You know ice creams in the rain give you bad throats, and you just can't play with anybody you want to. You know you don't show what you feel and you know you should marry successful men, they are better suited to support the family. Wow!! you are less likely to get hurt, fall ill, screw up your life, live it or enjoy it; sounds frabjuous. 


What was I thinking, hating growing up?! And whatever could Peter Pan have meant by "If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up. Not me! Not I, not me!"
Go figure all ye wise, old people.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Our happy ending

It isn't exactly a fairytale
No poison apples
No glass slippers
No witches 
No fairies
No Exiles
With seven kindly men
Albeit a little 
Vertically challenged.
And alas!
No Prince
On a white horse
To ride with 
To the waiting castle
And our happy ending

It never has been a movie
No scripted lines
No dance sequences
No perfect hairstyles
No sensual songs
In the summertime rain
In some lonely ruins
And alas!
No hero
To fight alone
The bad guys
Just for me
And our happy ending

It's not quite picture perfect
You and me
Some laughter
Many fights
Perhaps a toddler's
First masterpiece:
All indistinct
And alas!
You don't catch me
But I pull you down
And together we lie
You and me
And our happy ending.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Farewell notes

If we were too look at it closely, life is but this massive, unending anthology of short stories. In some we are protagonists, in some antagonists, in many just a small side character and in quite a few a digression. Our tales have been penned down, interwoven with those of myriad others as we share our pages with so many others. 


You and I, we shared a story. You know we share, though you may not know it well. I am sure you despise it by now, and still I shall tell it to you one time. We may have lived the same story, but it ended at different places for us.


For you our story ended the minute I walked out on you, for me it still goes on. Do you remember the look of consternation, of guilt on my face when I walked away? I know you didn't, you couldn't have. Trust me though, it was there: both the guilt and the pain of leaving you behind. For months I'd cry myself to sleep and wake up to an undifferentiated blur of time. It took me forever to forget you, but forget you I never did. Memories of you were like this precious miniature painting, priceless yet full of guilt as it stolen. I hid you in my mind behind a lot of exaggerated baggage I collected since I left you. Ever so often however, the wind would blow away the dust and I'd have a clear look at our story and fall apart. It has been too long, and I got another shot at happiness. But I cannot let anyone replace you. It's not just guilt but the pain of considering you replaceable that scares me. What I fail to stand by and play my part again like with you. I doubt I can take this anymore and so I have decided to fade away. No one shall ever replace you, you are my first and only. Today I make sure of it. I end this story hereof, of us and of me so that no new characters are written.


If you ever come across these words, just remember I loved you. I just didn't have a choice. I loved you so much that I make you my only story.

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Exorcism of an Unforgetting Heart

Flashes...
Memories...
Your laughter
That smells
Of wet earth
And dreams
With an acrid tinge
Of hopes gone by


I have never missed you,
Never got the chance
But I wish I did


You're a jigsaw puzzle
And I hold every piece;
Only the grooves have changed
They fit no more.
The line have faded,
The colours run into each other
A grotesque image
Of the face before.


We sit together
We reminisce
We have no new
Memories to make.
Time has washed you away
In all your fluid grace
While I sit
On the clumsy boulder
Of a wistful life;
Babbling
To the bits of you
I have clung on to
Like a parasite.


Blow away in the wind;
Be gone.
Your eyes
They are still the same hazel
But they have forgotten to smile
When they see me
Be gone
So that I too can forget
that treacherous smile

Sunday, June 19, 2011

From the Diary of Mrs Shakespeare


Bill’s latest screenplay is apparently brilliant; has to be, Chris didn’t seem too happy about it. He says Universal Studios are a sucker for lapping it up like this. But I am sure it’s great, his screenplays always are. He has such a way with words.
Well I should know; I fell for him now didn’t I. I’d been warned and scorned at. He was so much younger, but then again he did have a way with words.
He would charm me with his words and I’d let him. Oh what a fool I had been but what was I to do: he had such a way with words. Such a way that he had me knocked up in six months. And alas all that scorn and all the warnings and for all his way with words, marry me he had to. But such a way with words he had, that he had me believing. He told me his talents needed him to be in the city, his creativity needed the space to grow, and he needed to go. He would miss me, but I had to stay back. It was best for our little Susanna. I agreed.
He was right. All his screenplays have been successes. You can guess by the new girl in his arm every week. (They aren’t surely with him for his looks and they are all too dumb for his way with words). Maybe he’s good because he saved all his human insights and empathy for his screenplays. And there is also his way with words. It always got him out of our arguments. But then again it was his lack of originality that started them in the first place. He never could come up with an excuse ever, the sheer brilliance of which would make me forgive him.
 Originality, well now that’s something I had in the marriage. I may not turn a word like he does, but I sure can turn a story. How else do you think I got him to pay child support for Hamnet and Judith, when he wasn’t even around at that time.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Bangles




Pixie dust,
Dream debris,
Shards of hope
Molded in
Foolish optimism.
They prick,
they scratch:
I bleed.
I still wear them proudly
Jangling on my wrists

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Broken Heart Pieces



Alone and barefoot,
Numb with cold
Walking over
An hourglass' lost soul
I stepped on some
Broken heart pieces.

The pain took time
To fool the guarding numbness
And be known.
But it wasn't the pain
Of trampling
Some heart's shards.

I had been so busy
Keeping it safe,
Far far away,
I never noticed
You breaking my heart
And walk away.