My Mother

7 a.m.

The sun had started to show rather beautifully. The aching rays of sunlight fell profusely on his skin as I stood there naked, burning with indecisiveness and desire both at once. His face, an epitome of innocence perfectly hid the charring that he had tried to cover up all night by attempting to go back to sleep every hour. It had been four hours and here I was, still romanticizing him in my head.

I had been awake for quite a while, making myself some light breakfast as I hid my shame in a towel I found hanging behind his bathroom door.  I had watched him shift from the side of the bed towards the centre. His devouring occupancy made me realize my fleeting grasp on his life. I had owned his presence for one night. For one night, it was mine to hold and exploit as he lay there unaware of light years of pain that he had initiated. I knew, better than anyone, to expect nothing more but were my senses defeating me?

6.30 a.m.

For the most part, I am a deep sleeper. I used to sleep a lot when I was small. What I didn’t know was that I was only that carefree and comfortable with myself.

Nights like these, nights with girls, hardly delivered any sleep. I kept waking up every hour to the smell of the respective sweet feminine perfume, which always smelt like my mother’s.  I’d let it gush into me as I watched my lungs cringe and throw the scent out of my system almost instantly. Sometimes I would even lie in bed just contemplating about who was beside me and what she might say when I told her what haunted me. It was only to while away my time. Fruitless.

Tonight was the same.

I was not surprised.

However, I’m awake right now.  As I lie on my stomach, I don’t see her here. Maybe she’s gone.

I shift towards the centre of the bed. Here it is.

Maybe now I can sleep.  I lie on my back, for reasons of convenience, adjusting myself to the lukewarm temperature of the bed sheet which essentially means she hasn’t been gone long.

My eyes shuffle around in search of some sign of belonging. I can’t see anything.

Thank goodness.

I do speak an awful lot when drunk.

3 a.m.

He is asleep. Or at least he appears to be. His eyes are a little swollen and I can still experience the taste of his evasive alcohol in my mouth. I’m enjoying it. I’m running through his description in my head. As usual, it’s all so poetic and battered. There is a kind of unfathomable damage in poetry itself and I can’t seem to get rid of it.

Those bashful eyelashes, unusually unkempt hair, his obsession with being lousy and his dignified need for being alone; all of it appearing so dynamic in my head. It could be the middle-of-night syndrome where when you have nothing to do; you resort to glorifying the first object your eyes rest on.

When I caught him staring at the marks on my thighs, I knew this was a mistake. He was not conscious enough to treat me with ignorant courtliness and he didn’t.

“Hey, my mom did that to herself too!” he cheered. “In front of me.”

There I was, stripped of my vicious thoughts and shame, dressed in nothing but bland flesh and pretentious valiance and this purposeless one night stand had managed to make me loathe myself for one more night.

I was, suddenly, famished of company and glad that for one night I could wallow in regret with an unconscious stranger, since he had fallen on the bed immediately after, lying next to me.

I was alone, not lonely.

I had a bloodless hand to hold.

I had an insignificant moment.

I had had a crass confrontation.

I was not alone.

2.50 a.m.

What have I done? Why did I say that?

My eyes are closed and my face is dug into the pillow but I can feel the mortifying silence fill the room like a call of death.

Why did she do this to me, My Mother.

Some stories never end

Only when I think

Back, and realise what is gone.

How situations changed

And feelings altered,

Because I'm left rather alone.

How I did not embrace the absence,

Nor let it go.

I slithered into a nutshell,

Careful and slow.

I filled the void

With the omnipresent air,

I left papers 

Some crumpled

All blank,

Only to stare. 

I dug out my eyes,

Watched them blossom

Like a cherry tree.

I thought I was flying,

In solitude and free. 

But what did this bird

Know, apart from the cage.

It was only taught:

All the world's a stage.

One Sentence. One Want.

Thank you everyone for taking a minute out of your preoccupied days and answering in one sentence, what you want. It means a lot to me. 

This was a small project I did for myself. And it was indeed a successful one. 

I had the Gen Y be a part of it for two reasons. 

Firstly, because we are constantly criticised for being extremely materialistic in all aspects of our life. How we're always busy on our Smartphones and pay no heed to the small yet important things in life. How money is the only thing we desire and would do anything to get it.  (However, this is a very controversial statement. All of you who answered my question are, mostly, still in school or (junior) college. Therefore, it is quite obvious that money is not our first concern and we possess the freedom to contemplate other dimensions of life. Taking this into consideration would completely kill the purpose of my project so I'd like to ignore it.)

Secondly, I just wanted to know what people's spontaneous responses would be. 

What I noticed is that most of you did not give materialistic responses. Which, frankly, surprised me because I used to think I'm the only one who doesn't know what she wants when it comes to tangible valuables. In fact, the answers sound rather mature once you read them. 

Is our generation maturing faster? Yes, it is. 

Also, I hardly got any ambitious answers. 

I want to be a journalist but I, myself, would never answer this question with 'I want' to be a journalist. Which is funny because when we start going to school, we are made to write 'FIVE SENTENCES ON MYSELF' at some point. And, if I'm not wrong, "I want to be a Fashion Designer, Engineer, Doctor etc." is always one of the sentences. 

But then, why not now? 

I think it's because overtime we have lost the significance for it. Making a career out of our lives is not something we 'want' any more, rather it's something we know we 'have' to. 

Attend school since the age of 3, get marks, get into a good college, get a job, be rich. We have accepted this to be a system and maybe that's why we don't think of it as something far-off  that we desire.
Nevertheless, this is open to a lot of arguments beyond my thoughts.

A lot of you asked me what I wanted.

I couldn't answer because a new want kept coming to my mind every time I read someone else's answer.

By the end of it, I wanted a lot of things. But I'm going to stick to the first thing that came to my mind. I have incorporated it below because I want to retain absolute anonymity. 

Thank you again for being a part of this. It means a lot to me. If anyone is uncomfortable with their answer then let me know. I'll remove it. Also, don't judge any of the answers. :)
Enjoy reading.

Perfection in all things.

I want to be happy.

I want eternal love.

At least once in my life I want to travel to some place far off all alone.

Happiness without fear.

I really want to be an independent woman in the future.

I really don't know.

I just want to be happy all my life. If I'm happy I wouldn't want anything.

I want to find hope.

No jealousy, only love. 

I want loyalty and trust from everyone I know.

I want the whole world.

I really want to be, what I potentially can be.

I want a political backing and this one girl.

I want to give it all up. 

Knowledge and Peace of Mind.

The engaging cacophony of vibrant enterprise, the sweat and blood of building value, the honour of public service and the the unbridled love of a good woman. 

Freedom. Independence.

I want to learn how to hold on to people.

A Blu-Ray Disc player.

I want fame.

Freedom.

I want to be independent from my worries and feel free from social obligations.

Tattoo.

I really want my Hogwarts acceptance letter because Muggle life is too mediocre; but I would be satiated with one from Oxford too.

Peace of Mind.

A day when I wake up and I feel like not running away, not caring about tomorrow and finally being content.

I want to make my parents proud and find true love. 

Peace of mind, freedom of thoughts, being understood while being me.

Somebody I can open up to.

I really want my leg to be fine so that I can play football again.

I really want love.

A penthouse apartment.

I want abs.

The ability to let go off things that haunt me.

I was reading Harry Potter, so yeah I want a wand.

To travel from the peak of Mt. Everest to the bottom of the Pacific.

I want to know Myself.

I really want to get out of my art block.

I want to know what I want to do in life.

Midnight thoughts

I wanted to pull out pieces of me and burn alive.

I wanted to pierce this silence so that it would grow quieter.

I wanted to laugh at this absurdity till my hopes were famished. 

I wanted to scar someone till they were delicate enough to understand the world.

I wanted to scream for acceptance as an act of rebellion.

I wanted the music to make me fall asleep for more than just a night.

I wanted to tell people I pushed them because I didn't know how to hold on.

I wanted to walk into oceans to fill myself up.

I wanted to desire things.

I wanted to not be so complacent.

I wanted a sentence that could shred my insides repeatedly.

I wanted the swirling galaxies inside me to prove themselves.

I wanted the magnitude of fear to exceed its limit. Then explode.

I wanted the selfish to remain selfish.

I wanted undercover happiness and relentless euphoria.

I wanted clarity of distance.

I wanted a hopeless conversation.

I wanted assurance that we were all going to die.

I wanted green grass at 7 a.m on a sneaky Sunday morning.

I wanted a sun kissed act of poetry.

I wanted my black desires to sleep soundlessly.

I wanted my inadequacy to stop haunting even though I called out to it every night. 

Obscure

Those pen marks

That keep you up

Through nights are just a cure

For when you thought 

They knocked and opened

And barged in through your door. 

You feel lofty and lost

And so obscure,

That it fills you up with beauty

You end up carving on your own.

You never ask

You never tell

You're a byline 

Underneath, unread.

Maybe that's why

When they were scared

They called for help

Didn't hear you yelp

No, no, no.

Elope

Didn’t you ever

Hear the Saints of Night

The way they lingered and whispered

And took away all our fright.

That one brusque evening

You looked into eyes

Stars spelled wisdom

And burned away sins

All the skies.

Akin to my demons

My fears spelled the plight

Of virtue and forgiveness

How did you make it all right?

Drunk in a café

Under the beach house

At night.

You smiled like it could

Last and that is why I sighed

With hope that this moment

Could freeze but you turn

To tell me: it’s over,

The hard part has begun.

We danced on shattered glass

As our feet bled to bone

But happy, oh, I was

I didn’t have to be alone.

The moonlight shone brightly

And razed all my homes

Of free falls and train wrecks

The silence choked me more.

It stung, the common sight

Of being apart and far off

The shore.

I swore I could plunge in

Deep and let go.

It purged me of essentials

To let my memories

Out the door.

But conviction that held me

Urged me to get off

The floor.

The friend that I needed

Was killed in a war

Of preposterous vulnerability

That I couldn’t evade

Even now.

I searched and I failed

Till one night I saw

I didn’t need my friend

Or an image for someone

To draw.

I slipped into a rabbit hole

That I knew held the key

To a place if I entered

I would not flee.

There you stood with shoulders

So broad and so sure

If I was in a crisis

You’d do more than just cure.

Now we’re back to the Café

The beach house

At night.

It’s stormy and ravenous

Of destruction tonight.

You’re talking and slowly

Your breath means more

Than the humor that escapes

Your perpetuating aura-

Let’s elope.

The Lost Woods

Sometimes when I stop
And stare, at the quick and easy.
I question rather repeatedly,
The direction of the wind so breezy.
An entrapment of original ideas,
Which makes no one want to flee.
But then I think that maybe,
The woods are lost, not me.

The Front Row Seat

He raised his hand and jerked it upwards, trying to pull back the inconvenient yet somehow majestic sleeve of his dark grey blazer. The intercom rang and he sighed as he heard the ever-so-bland voice of his assistant reciting to him some appointment she thought he had forgotten.

But he hadn’t.

He simply chose not to remember it.

Nevertheless, he uttered “Send him in ten.”

“Certainly, sir.” came the response.

 

He needed these ten minutes. Not to prepare himself or clear the mess from his already compartmentalized desk. It was a gesture. A rather passive one meant to make the person sitting on the opposite chair subside with irrational inferiority.  

But in reality, he felt bored. He was like a teenager in the body of a 35 year old. What he really wanted to do was walk out that door and greet the gentleman waiting outside. After all, time was precious to all and wasting it, in his opinion, was a sort of cosmic crime in the moral books of the universe.

 

The Murano Glass lamp on the table camouflaged just perfectly with the ethereal air of the room. The Swarovski pen lying next to his laptop displayed wealth and stature gorgeously. Handmade Egyptian artifacts on the wall behind him never failed to have an arresting effect on anyone who entered that door for the first time.

Overall, his office appeared magnificently gregarious. Although to him it felt like an entrapment.

His feelings were jostled into a tunnel of his mind with the buzzer painfully piercing through his ear.

“Sir?”

“Send him.”

 

For the next two hours he was immersed in the one-to-one symposium with his colleague. Cups of coffee were refilled, the AC temperature adjusted and papers signed. Constant activity left no room for any Awkward. There was neither a casual breath nor a worried silence. There were talks in jargon and numbers not meant for the layman to understand.

Finally, the enfranchising words were let out, “It was a pleasure doing business with you Mr. Manhotra.” Accompanied by a quick nod, they were both good to go.

 

He felt consumed. One would presume from his ecstatic smile that he was now a comfortable part of that life style. But nobody knew that it was a result of those forceful braces back in eighth grade which gave way to an inkling far from the truth.

 

There was still time before he would be expected to reach home. Even though he felt like rushing out, he had to fight himself. It was, supposedly, ‘a thing’ to come home late from work when you were the Vice President of a large firm.

And then they said money would make life easy.

 

 

But the money never pinched him. He had seen enough of the callosity that prevailed in the lives of those that lived on the tattered streets of Mumbai. He had come to realize that Money was a dictator. A cruel one at that. And though silent and seemingly powerless, it would inevitably withdraw certain privileges from your life. He was more than aware of the criticism that would stab him in the back like friend; he was ready to serve as the martyr in the war field of this corporate world if it meant giving his family a quality life.

 

One of his many untold struggles involved this 44^th floor office. The grand glass window that gave him a view from the top. The fear of falling was so secure that he had forgotten what it felt like to look up.

It was like being the topper of your class in school; full of innocent joy and pride. Until one fine morning you woke up and found the redundant happiness smothered by vacillating colours of insecurity. He knew there was no going back. At least for him.

But he hoped. He wished this was not what true success felt like. He dreamt dreams that manifested escapades involving his disappearance into someplace else. His awakening would bring to him a reminiscent shame. This moment was once upon a time his dream, too.

 

 

He loosened his tie a little. His thoughts sometimes possessed the ability to physically smolder him.

Breaking away, he glanced at his Rolex.

It was time to go home. A schoolboy-like excitement welled up inside him even before he could begin to hide the injuries from his reopened wounds.

 

They don’t tell you that success, just like funerals, is all about others and nothing about you. They don’t, he thought.

 

 

Old Leg

My veranda smelled like old dust and the rusted chairs added to the ambience of lethargy. I had wrinkled through, and out of my glory days. This weak tea and sugar-free biscuits comprised my morning and evenings. The sun set; birds flew back home. 

My predicament lay static.

Every minute detail appeared emphatic.

Like young-age stilettos, nostalgia clicked, at every corner of my memories. A blasted entourage of vanishing mirth and laughter. They said, body aches were the beginning of a new journey. Or sadly so, an end. This old leg was proving to be a bit of a trouble lately. Like a horrible dream, I’d shake the pain off for just a bit.

How fruitful is the physical pain,

That can take over the memory lane.

An empty cup; cue for the execution of the next activity.

Not wanting to hurry, I sat there an extra few minutes just so I could sigh in my solitude and feel like I had achieved it all in life.

But no one could achieve it ‘all’. No achievement ever topped the list. My own seemed so shallow and worthless in front of this Behemoth made up of loneliness and fears alone.

City lights, and a fake smile;

Sacrificing, to be enough and agile.

A premonition made its way through like a serpent towards its first bite. I had sat there for much more than time permitted. I gently placed my right hand on my knee, took a little support of the arm rest and there I was, on my feet. Ready to gawk around at whatever my eyes would find. Mundane takes time to get used to. It certainly does.

The doorbell rang. A few shrunken jolts of a childlike excitement built up in my body as I moved out of my veranda and into the seclusion of my room. Upon reaching the door I figured it must be the neighbour. Asking for sugar, chilli or something of the sorts they use in newly married houses.

All I had to give,

Was experience in a wrap.

But everyone’s more concerned,

With looking for the Map.

To my surprise, my neighbour’s one year old daughter stood at the door. Her wide eyes looked up at my crooked nose like I’d done the work of a Genie for her. They sparkled in a distinct manner, much more rident than mine would have ever looked. That toothless smile spilled sugar in my mouth and that’s when I caught myself smiling. How could I not? There

she was, an oblivious little child gazing at me with a gigantic, inexplicable awe. Like I had completed the world’s most impossible task by opening the door.

Achievements. The real ones.

It would be hard to explain this feeling. It was a scintillating vibe of satisfaction and my chest swelled up with a tender joy. All because of that one look in her eyes.

“Aunty, could I have today’s newspaper? He has just came home and I cannot recall where I kept it.”

Sigh. Their sugar and chilli.

Death and Found

As I am brushed aside due to ‘more important’ work, I realise the fatality of my existence. My survival has killed many and yet my survival is what keeps them alive.

I’d rather not play the game of ‘Who Am I?’ You can use several distinct words to describe me but my subjectivity is so versatile that not even the Oxford Dictionary, so profoundly hailed, can explain me to you. Call me Passion, Creativity, Hunger, Art, Talent or even a Waste of Time. I am pretty much all of them and not once have I considered myself to be punitive. Why should I, for I have fed more hearts than those charitable dispositions and quenched more thirsts than you can imagine.

And even so, Gratitude never found me and here I am waiting for a call that often comes late, but never too late.

Sitting here, ignored and perpetually passive, I have come to observe a lot about myself in other people, but mostly, about other people only. Like for instance, consider Mrs. Verma here, who basically tossed me into an uninhabited corner of her mind where the darkness will probably chew me down to bits that she will never again be able to discover. But I don’t blame her. That poor lady is trapped. She’s trapped in a water body where she resembles the fish as well as the bait. But how can that be possible? Well, Man has been known to do the impossible for far too long, hasn’t he?

If my memory still serves me right, I remember Mrs. Verma used to be an extraordinary artist in her days. Too cliché? I guess so, but clichés are called so for a reason.

Having completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree successfully, she lived the victorious life of an independent working woman in the 80s, until she got married. And maybe Fate would have it so, because her mother-in-law wanted things to be ‘like they were supposed to be’. Mrs. Verma was doomed to be a Housewife.

Here’s when I come in. Mrs. Verma’s abundant love for beads and diyas and paints could never really get her anywhere in life, according to her mother. Under the influence of such whims, Mrs. Verma was condemned to a life of hell where she would forever function behind the dreams of her children and husband. A mother’s words have such scintillating effect; I cannot even begin to explain. Mrs. Verma slowly and steadily let go off her desires to stay up all night and create masterpieces out of scraps she’d discover lying around. Unlike the ordinary assumption, she was not forced to do so. But she was made to believe that it was necessary to do so. And that, my friends, is what I have always found to be even more dangerous. The difference between the two is the same fine line that separates a misanthrope and a hermit. In both cases, the alternatives are misunderstood to mean exactly the same.

Getting back to my tale, as Mrs. Verma’s life progressed, her Youth met with the fury of Avarice, the Greed accompanied by Need for money. And gradually, I became a manifestation of her childhood.

I’ll admit I felt a little left out. But I’ll also admit that this wasn’t the first time.

I would say I felt bad for her and honesty would prevail. But I would rather empathise because of the Pity I feel. It saddened me not, to see that I would never again collide with Mrs. Verma, but rather she would never collide with me.

This was all said and done; her fate was sealed till the time of her grandiloquent marriage and her expected first child. And the second.

Both now fully grown, Mrs. Verma found herself in a vacuum filled with the laughter of her kids and the smiles of her raconteur husband. But what was she doing apart from feeding others’ dreams and pacifying herself? Absolutely nothing.

I had died within her. An absence she took quite a while to realise.

It was the calm before the storm. So natural. So strong.

The storm was vigorous and her quest stung hard. She was faced with several of her Inconsistencies that left indelible memories hanging from the loose ends of her thoughts.

Let me tell you that I have been proud many a times in life, and maybe that’s why I wasn’t exceptionally joyed when her cold fingers found me somewhere in the shadows of Timidity.  But I could breathe and she could breathe and that’s always been enough for me. I would never satisfy her because if I did then I wasn’t really enough. But that was my one strength, that no one could ever possess enough of me.

She found me.

The challenge was to not let me die a second death.

And that’s something I’ve always envied in humans. At least they die only once. Because every time I die, a huge chunk of me goes unfound. So what’s all this fuss about wanting to be immortal?

Mrs. Verma is still sitting here, and she snubs me every now and then for some other ‘more important’ work. Sometimes she returns, most of the times she doesn’t. Sometimes I imagine the Grim Reaper beckoning me once again and I will admit, it makes my environment a little lugubrious.

I know that I may never be ‘more important’ or even ‘important’, for that matter. But I am something else. I am Essential.

And that might just be another description of me that Humans are yet to discover.