Broken Glass

She looked through the window in front of her. The wind blew decisively, making the tree outside shiver violently. Silence resumed but it offered the woman no comfort. She spent a few more moments looking through the frosty glass before she rose to her feet. She walked towards the door, her steps so graceful that she may have been gliding across the marble floor.

She entered a large corridor, dimly lit. The halls of the mansion seemed to be filled with an emptiness that nothing could fill. Oil paintings, hanging on the walls, came alive in the candlelight, their lifeless eyes following her every step. Yet she continued her lonely stroll, unnerved by the shadows that seemed to come to life when you turned your back on them. The air began to freshen up as she approached the living room.

Moonlight flooded in through the large French windows and its beams were caught by a grand chandelier, the ornamental piece and pride of the living room. It cast a deathly pall on the furniture in the room. Walking past the ornate armchairs, the woman reached for the door. It opened, creaking reluctantly. The air, now clear, was as cold as ice. The wind blew no more and the trees around the house stood still, surveying the ground coldly.

She continued walking and stopped at the edge of the courtyard, in front of a solitary slab of stone. The woman bent closer to read the inscription. "Here lies Lady Alice Penderfield, who lived a contented life and whose passing was eased by a bed of roses. She will be missed by her ever-loving husband Lord Penderfield." A wry smile eased her sharp features, followed by an icy laugh that cut through the night air. "What good is a bed of roses after sleeping on shards of broken glass?" she whispered to herself, as she walked into the desolate night.

Home Once More

Trivial things have begun to matter now. I toss and turn - my bed always seems too hard and my pillows too high. I find myself craving every cuisine that I hear of. To add to it all, I am perennially broke. Staying away from home brings to the forefront everything that was, earlier, too small to worry about. My daily emergencies consist of kurtas running colour and inner-wear disappearing into thin air.

Though the room I stay in now offers some familiarity, it does not give me the same sense of comfort that even the thought of home brings to me. Waking up with just enough time to get dressed and leave has become a luxury that I cannot afford. I lose myself in my thoughts, wishing I was walking back through the doors of my house only to be greeted by silence and a hungry cat. Still deep in thought, my hand moves to the fan regulator, only to remember that it does not work. Like a lot of things in my life.

There are times when I long to be left alone. I am finally learning to shut the rest of the world out. With my earphones in place and a book in my hand, Perdeler by Apocalyptica and Sebnem Ferah provides the perfect foil to Anton Chekhov's engrossing stories. "Ere I had learned to drink of tears from the chalice of life..." sings Yonich, a character from one of Chekhov's tales. And I find myself at home again.

A lazy day

Vacations never did me any good. Not that I'm complaining but they seem to bring about a very strong need to be lethargic. The kind of need that pulls you back into bed just when you decide to do something constructive - like write. Suffice to say, I thought I wouldn't be able to put a pen to paper for the next few weeks. I guess I forgot that I owned a computer.

And just like everyone else, we remember vacations according to something important that happened (like a trip) or a whole bunch of things that we kept doing on and on for two months. This summer will probably be defined by reruns of TV shows that I never thought that I would watch, Russell Peters, Faust and trying to give my cat her medication. Which is a highly dangerous job that makes me glad that my cat has had her shots. If the bit about Faust is scaring you a little, it might be reassuring to know that I have only gotten past the first few pages - with the help of a dictionary.

My cat makes me extremely jealous. She wakes up in the morning at around 6 and stretches in five different ways even though she probably had the most comfortable spot on the bed. She saunters towards her bowl of food and digs in. After some soul-searching at the litter tray, she has to make the toughest choice of the day - will she sit around and let herself be amused by her staff or will she just creep into her corner behind the television and sleep for the rest of the day? I don't have a choice - I wake up or I will get kicked out, I make the bed or get yelled at, I clean up my room or I will get yelled at a little more because I will be facing a crankier mother.


It's a strange feeling, sitting at the computer in the afternoon and listening to the soundtrack of Juno, knowing you have absolutely nothing to do but relax. I wonder when I'll feel this way again.

The devil's hour

Waking up at three in the morning may not be my most favourite thing to do. Strangely enough, it holds its charms even for someone who feels that she is better off bewitched by a blanket of sleep. The darkness seems to have settled down, not willing to move for another hour or two at the least. The night air itself seems paralysed, too afraid to breathe and wake the sleeping trees. The world around you has come to a complete stop and in times of inner chaos, the silence is strangely comforting. Social norms and expectations disappear in the darkness. There is no one else but you. A feeling that frees you and inhibits you all at once. After what feels like an eternity, you realise that you have all the time in the world at your fingertips but the shackles of duty bind you to your dull blue textbook. After soaking in the silence for two hours, I find that my eyes feel heavy again. The powerful hand of sleep meets with little resistance as it lifts me off my bed, makes me turn the lights off and return - all in one smooth, automatic motion - to the comfort of my pillows. I close my eyes and within seconds, the world ceases to exist. There is no one anymore.

The Secret Life Of Daydreams

*This title was inspired by a piece of music from "Pride and Prejudice", the one that recently came out with Keira Knightley in the lead. It stuck to the back of my head and wouldn't let go till I started writing.*

Sitting alone on a plain wooden bench,
The clouds play lazily.
There is a breeze that brushes
Past the trees,
Through the leaves.
It suddenly hastens
An appointment suddenly remembered.
On its tail, a curious creature flutters
A beautiful one, no doubt
Her crystal wings glint in the sunlight
As she makes her way.
Where does she go?
I continued to wonder
Long after the dream had dissolved
Into the distance.
Does she go back home and go to bed
To ready herself for another busy day?
When she will find another person
Who will dream her dream?
Or will she go to a tea party
Where she will sit
And along with the other daydreams
Sharing experiences and gossip?
Or will she find a quiet corner?
A dark little nook?
Where she will sit and cry
Till her glow disappears
For no one has thought of her at all?
I turn to take my bag
And there she sits
Looking at me with a thoughtful gaze
I smile to myself.
The daydream she carried had been mine.
She picked herself up
And fluttered out of sight
Glinting brighter than ever
For a job well done.

Train rides and self-help books

The train ride to Bangalore was absolutely dismal. I found myself watching "You've Got Mail", after realizing that we had a good four hours to reach our destination. It came as a rude shock to me when the movie got cut halfway and jumped to Timbaland's video of "The Way I Are". As much as I like the song, the sudden jump from a rom-com to a music video with Timbaland's face staring back at you is not very digestible. People around me were either busy reading or making small talk with their neighbours. Children were running up and down the aisle wildly, screaming in excitement. Ah! If only I were that small and was able to understand what on earth they found so delightful so I could take part in it and atleast pass the time. As far as my neighbours (most of whom were my family) were concerned, the man in front of me was absorbed in a self-help book. It's title screamed out "You Can Win!" and the reader seemed absorbed. I almost felt like tapping his book and telling him that I had learned the hard way that no matter how many self-help books you read, you will never win that debate competition in front of the entire college. Or cook that delicious chocolate cake that looks flawless on the cover of a self-help book for cooking - that's all just Photoshop. Of course, he looked older and much larger than me so I decided against it. The men in the row across the aisle were discussing rises and falls in the stock market and how the highway system was not being worked on very well. In the midst of this intelligent discussion, one of them cracked a very lame, "punny" joke (as a friend would put it) and the two collapsed into fits of dignified laughter. I lost interest in them at exactly that moment. For the next three and a half hours, I watched the trees flit by, in a hurry to get nowhere and stopped the bread-and-omelette man every time he passed me in order to buy a plate. My sister did the same for the vegetable cutlet man. And some advice for those of you who wish to travel by train to a place that is ages away - make sure your movies do not get cut in the middle and do not book seats in the new, improved Lalbagh. All they do is give you a very bad back-ache.

Random

It's a few months after my last post. I can safely say that I have had writer's block and the only reason for that is that I haven't been depressed for the past few months. Good for my health, bad for my sanity... This is probably one of the few redeeming qualities I have and to think that my mood swings determine when I write well is a thought that completely puts me off. So much for becoming the next Goethe... or Poe... or anyone for that matter. However, staring at my blank notebook page without so much of a spark lighting up somewhere in my brain has taken its toll. I have an unused notebook, calling to me in desperation before the stench of mothballs consumes its innate scent and a blog that will probably cease to exist in the minds of the same people it had earlier delighted. "No!" I thought to myself, "I must not let this happen!! I have a responsibility towards this blog! This blog - " pointing to the computer screen, " - is nothing less than a human soul!"

And so I sat at my computer table, drumming away (not at the keyboard) wondering what I could possibly write that could interest the few but happy souls reading this. And I thought... And thought... And thought... By the end of an extremely disturbing movie, I still had nothing to go on. It is only at these turning points that you realize that there's a spot on the computer screen that you've forgotten to clean or that your left ear seems slightly larger than your right.. or not. So I figured that maybe one of my previous articles or poems could inspire me to write something new - or I could just put one of them here and tell you all, "Yes it is new! Why thank you! How nice of you to say so!" I'm evil and conniving but I just don't have the capacity to make decisions like this. Too many choices!!!!

If you're wondering, I did consult my previous articles and I realized that everything I had written about was myself. I know what's running through your head. You're probably thinking, "My! That self-centred girl! Doesn't she know that people are going through worse pain?" I thought that too. It's a very bad thought to hit you when you're right in the middle of an interesting article because then you begin to wonder, "Should I write about something else?" So I pondered over the question, which is an extremely overwhelming and exhausting task. I had to eat a few cookies to make it through. Should I write about something philosophical, like one of those blogs that you stumble upon, something that would make you question the very fibre of your being? Or something important, like a political decision or a natural calamity?

The flaws in both these ideas were probably the most obvious. Idea no. 1 had a very simple flaw - questioning the fibre of anyone's being tends to come back and bite me in the arse (I was going to say ass but this way it just sounds so much more prim and proper. If you look closely, you can see the smug grin on my face for being so smart.) Idea no. 2 has a very obvious flaw - My knowledge about political decisions falls somewhere in the negative side of the number line. The last time someone spoke to me about the N-deal, I spaced out and landed up in a different time zone altogether.

So that effectively ruled out the only two choices I had come up with. I also realized something else. Writing is not my only talent. Don't get too happy - I'm still depressed (If only depression were a superpower...) The next thing I'm good at is coming up with opinions that, if you look closely, coincides with common opinion BUT I'm one of the few who can write an entire article about it and then put it on a blog for a lucky few to see. And then feel like I've finally done something worthwhile. The things I do... So I'm back to square 1. I figure that writing my opinion is a fun thing for me to do but I'm not quite sure if it's a fun thing for others to read. So if anyone, anyone at all, comes up with an idea that you think that I could possibly put to use, please email me. or broadcast this message into space and see if someone replies. You never know - they might find this more interesting than the numerous speeches that have been sent out. They're not going to make contact if they keep falling asleep. As for the ones who don't have a topic in mind but would like to express themselves - you're welcome to comment. I shall take all - the good, the bad and the ugly.

Till a more depressing time...