palkon ke sirhaane baithe

khwab wahin jo aanewale

Been dreaming of death. Luminous unpigmented fabric taking over the entire dream vision. The green, green grass against which death lays, whitely-clothes, pearly clouds engulfing it, making death appear vast, and un-solid. The dreams have penetrated the consciousness. Lied down stoned and the images flashed in front of me. Out of all fantasies possible this is what a slowed down brain chooses to torment me with.

I am cutting down on cigarettes; not out of a renewed outlook on life. A couple days it was to save petty cash, then my chest started to hurt, and then I got ridden with an affliction that makes it difficult to move or do anything at all. The latter led to day dreaming about places and situations that will never align with my life, it led to reading poetry frantically, it led to invoking Invictus over and over.

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

Conflict resolution has never been my forte. I cause a conflict, and I am resolute in my ways. Had a phone call with my mother that could have gone in any other way and would have been better than what spurted out of our collective anger. The aftermath of it is still ringing in my ears – our conversations now are faltering, sputtering, like an old bike trying too hard, too late. There is nowhere to go, might as well sit at the side of the road and let the dust cover you head to toe. Many summers ago, that was my mother and I; still a unit against her in-laws, still a unit against the whole world, which we had seen very little of. Stories were told of places and times away from me, my mother as a child, my mother at a wedding where the groom entered on an elephant, her first circumcision experience at her neighbour’s place, her in school, her in the kitchen, her before being a mother. Her and I, summers ago, at the side of the road, waiting for the Scorpio my naana was sending for her to come to his place, out bags resting under a tree, her face covered partially with her saree’s pallu, me drinking the Frooti my cousin brother got for me. Buses passed us, so did vehicles ready to be given as dowry to men whom nobody should care for in their entire lifetimes. The Scorpio arrived, lazily, as if doing us a favour. Perhaps it was a favour on my naana’s part for my mother, he had married and sent her away, what else could she want now. But I was too young for any of this, and whatever I thought, I kept it to myself because I hated being laughed at, or worse, ignored.

When I think of this memory, I grapple with a thought that is also a fear – am I still stuck, and is everything going to pass me by, until the dust compels me to return to itself?

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me. (Break, Break, Break by Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Optimism does strike its gong at times, ringing my ears, as if trying to remind me what The Mountain Goats has tried to remind me over and over. I am going to make it through this year ifitkillsmeIamgoingtomakeitthroughthisyearifitkillsme. This time next year, I will be living so good, won’t remember no pain (SZA).

In these moments, all my dreams seem possible. I will walk the miles and reach the places, I will enter the belly of the beast, my fist red and slimy, and I will pull out things that I want. I want not a lot, but that is not the excuse that needs to be made, to compensate for having desires. I want, so I will.

Things that are in right now include – rereading The Nakano Thrift Shop, rereading Anita Desai, reading one difficult book that lasts longer than everything ever has. I have been journalling in paragraphs; more than a sentence so I can lay bare some context, but short enough that I don’t start feeling pathetic about these problems that shroud my will to live.