Mar 4, 2010

All that passes from my hands..


Dear Writing Gods,

I wish I could give the ligthning and thunder of a new life to my writing. But when I sit down on the floor with my laptop , mosquitos bite into my blood my unwaxed skin itches with dryness. I cant create magic. I had assumed that writing would open new worlds but this writing only takes me deeper and deeper into the same old stories. I keep returning to the past. Where is the new sparkling life I was promised? Instead of letting go I turn to clasp tighter!

I go back to my old birthdays, the times candles could be placed on a half kg cake. The gifts that I wanted to get but never got. The friends that I wished would come. But never came.
To the warm smiles of my friends who stood with the their (now) exes. They looked so good together! Where did the magic disappear between them.
The flowering trees which shouted about the changing season. I only have pictures of them on my web albums now.
The songs I loved hearing. They still keep lilting in the past. The sweet songs of love (sic) I will never hear them anymore but they sounded so sweet then!
Oh and the rivers I would run to purge myself of the madness. The madness keeps returning.

Maybe it happens because of the time locks that I put to each magical moment. The times when the moment was so precious that I would close my eyes and put a psychic lock. Click! Please dont pass me by. Stay! Grow!
And they grow. In the past and in my writing. Like remember the first time I was flying to Pune.. I closed my fists so hard and pushed and shoved god! This should happen more often! I keep going back to that flight now. With the appetising taste of a new city and new people. I have no buisness left in Pune anymore. And yet every now and then I am back into that Air India flight. 18 years. Dressed in blue jeans and white top. 15 kgs overweight. Happy to be on an aeroplane alone to say a big hello to a new world. Those people that I didnt meet come back to haunt me.
The time I stood squinting at the statue of Ahilya Bai Holkar at the Maheshwar fort. The pandits were rolling 5000 shivlings of earth to be given out to Narmada. She started worshipping shiva after her husband died. She was the most compassionate ruler the whole of Malwa had seen. I felt the rigor mortis of the dead husband descending into my system. All of this woman's glory started with the deaths of men around her. My guess is she never let them die. Held on too tightly ! I stared at the statue of this tall gangly woman dressed in white. Sometimes stones stare back. I stapled that stare into myself. I was going to use this. This was no ordinary meeting of women. I had said Hi! to a woman who had who had changed the shape of walls by the iron in her will. I could certainly use this high of meeting her somewhere in my life. She came with me in memory since that day. She is a big person to carry around! But I have lugged her around and spoken to her on the long way from my home to office. It isnt a long way from Ghaziabad to Gurgaon. I couldnt ever finish one conversation with her about how much I liked doing what I was doing! She smiled at me when I told her all that..I hated people who thought it was a waste of time to travel those two points. She didnt come out to talk to me on any other route!
Its all passed me by now. It lives more ferociously than ever before.

Love
PS

5 comments:

aayanman said...

You know, watch the movie Up in the air. Quite a similar philosophy.

I think some of us live in the past..and for some - past keeps catching up. Those who had good memories quite like them coming back, but for those who had bad memories - it upsets their present.

Pearl said...

Hey thanks for reading and commenting Gyanban. I haven't seen Up in the air but will soon watch it. A lot many of my friends have been recommending it too! :)
BTW you have an interesting name! Gyanban! :) is it supposed to mean something too?

rainboy said...

It's hard to let the past go..especially when if was filled with magical moments.
But I guess time fades everything.

Take care ...Nice blog :)

Madhuri said...

I love travelling too, understand exactly what ur saying here Pearl, loved it, Im going back to hold some things again now :)!

Unknown said...

Such irony.memories....if good.... u hate forgetting ...doesn't allow u to look beyond..if bad u anyways get stuck....sometimes when u open those old books..the rose which was so important..is still preserved but you just can't remember what made it so special...so much with us we carry from the past..without realising how everything we hold is not letting us open our palms for all that which could have been better...wish this birthday u open your fists....