And when they met their bodies decided to do what their souls were meant to. Their lips melted into each other evoking the suppressed emotions that had been longing to express themselves. In the half shadows of the darkness, their fingers merged into the crevices between the fingers of each other's hands and thus intertwined their heart beats. His pulse began flowing in her veins as their minds identified every moment of this virgin experience with striking familiarity as if these figments of time had been in the eon forever. 

His fingers slid all over the contours of her graceful form with smoothness and studied intent. The sensations that emerged traveled both ways to both hearts piercing them with pangs of ecstasy. In a mellow moment of love, she wrapped her arms around his back and pressed down her head on his bare chest and acknowledged the beat of his heart which seemed to echo her name. Words seldom pursued from their lips but sighs of pleasure occasionally interfered with the harmony that fluidly filled the air. With each caress their skins made, with each flicker their tongues made on each other's bodies their hearts professed undying love.

Every time her hands caressed his manhood he felt the purity of her love flooding in him. Every dent he made on her feminine tenderness he silently promised his affection for her...for as long as he would live...Sometimes they both became still and then she locked her mesmerizing eyes on his inebriated teary eyes drawing out every ounce of pain and guilt, replacing it with her boundless love.

Their bodies kept anticipating every movement and responded with a sense of lucid fidelity and honesty as they traversed improbable universes where timid stars outshone the mighty harsh suns, staying afloat on incessant streams of azure drops that flowed through pristine skies and across whiffs of magical fragrance of first blooms..moving towards a blissful culmination dripping with satiety and peaceful completeness.    

It was all a dream and like ever it was weaved to break. It did. It was too perfect to last. But this was their dream and just like their relationship it had something which defied an end. Their dream fulfilled itself in their hearts and filled their hearts with this incomplete dream. That is how it had always been..flawfully incomplete and yet assuringly perfect. Reaffirming like Life.

Fate like always was just round the corner of those hours waiting to take them apart but they knew it wouldn't ever really succeed. There will always be that little light they planted in each other's souls..which playfully befriended, burnt with consuming passion, shone with ardent love, toiled in heart break, wept in estrangement and now promised to guide their separated paths.  

♪ ♫ ...Like the sunshine ♫

He thrust out his finger through the rolled down glasses of the window as if playfully poking an invisible someone in the air. his feeble finger slashing through the speeding air. The chill in the air was back ... that time of the year was back.

The 'City of joy' was unnervingly silent at that deathly hour of the night. The city's Victorian streets sans the usual bustle and the notorious traffic was a breeze for the taxi driver. In the hope to pack up for the day the driver veered through the empty roads as fast as he could.

The mood at the back seat of the taxi was in stark contrast. He was unhurried now. A sense of unfulfillment had become complete within him. His journey went on but there was no destination in mind any longer.

As the rickety taxi's speedometer clocked 100 kms an hour, light posts along the smoggy streets whizzed back at tremendous speeds. Painful memories , however, swept slowly across his mind. The unperturbed, nonplussed expression on his face hardly changed. The stench of ammonia waft across the region which meant close he was drawing close to the end of his ride. The smell was pungent enough to make even the callous taxi man flinch in disgust but strangely didn't elicit even the slightest repulse from him.The booze had dampened his senses or maybe he was just too lost in his preoccupations. 

The sleepy driver, swerved alarmingly on a turn that was supposed to lead them towards the destination. Lost in his streaming thoughts he was oblivious of the fact that the driver had failed to negotiate the sharp turn and the taxi toppled like a beast off balance. For a few excruciating moments he saw the gravelled road and the dispersed halo of the street lamps alternately in the tumbling unevenness of the yellow glow cast by the rolling car's headlights until the car frictioned to a deadening halt.

As the rays of the following morning swept away the last remains of the dark night, the cops stood at the cordoned site of the crash. The passenger at the back seat had suffered a broken neck and could not sustain the injury. From within the mangled body of the taxi, from the back seat, among other things was retrieved a burnt bouquet of trampled lilies with a small note on it saying "Happy Anniversary".     

 

8:55 PM

Her : Can I ask you something ? (sobbing)
Him : Hmm 
Her : will you love me forever ?
Him  : (silence)
Her : (after prolonged silence) Please reply
Him : Yes
Her : (after brief silence) Hmm
Him : Can I ask you something ?(sobbing and hesitant)
Her : Hmm... 
Him : Will you be mine forever ?
Her : (silence)
Him : hmm.... (silence follows)

End of August

There's a guy, not too old, lives in the opposite villa. Not much of him is known to me. Tall guy, bearded and sparse greying hair. Behaves queer.

Portions of his living room is visible from the window of my room. Vast empty space with just a table , a small refrigerator, an old fashioned television set and a recliner. A minimalist it seems.

On quiet nights, through the worn out curtains blown by the cool breeze, he is seen lying on the recliner. the TV (volume muted) streaming a medley of images cast strange shadowy shapes of flickering light that leaped all over the otherwise dark hall. There were electric lights in the house though, I suppose, there must be !

 He did not seem to watch the programs being aired. The mute live TV just seemed to fill in for a companion.

People sometimes say he is/was married. Some even claim to have seen his wife in yesteryears. There's a little photo frame with a lady's picture in it, he sometimes carries to the balcony and stares silently at it for hours leaning over the parapet. Maybe that's his wife. Not many visitors come by apart from a sweet little girl who comes along occasionally for a few hours in a chauffeured car. The silent old guy sports a rare bright smile on those days. Even the little one seems to enjoy his company.

The man becomes oddly strange when it rains. Sometimes he just stands and stares at the falling drops, imagining things or maybe remembering things in the past. At lengths, his distant gaze turns into a faint smile or a little tear in the corner of his eye.

Last night, when it rained, the guy emerged from the dark hall, a drink in his hand.He stood in the balcony staring at the falling drops. The street light in the lane faintly illuminated his face which revealed his swollen eyes. He held out the drink in his hand into the rain until few drops splashed into his glass. He then sipped from it slowly. Then, weak and heavy, he collapsed to the balcony floor, falling down on his knees. His bowed head clutched in his hands. I could hear him sob for quite sometime after which he just got up and disappeared into the insides.

The glass from which the left over drink spilled on the tiled balcony floor kept rolling there.

    

2:05 AM

Her : I am just a part of your life...just like any other part...I am not your life...

Him : (silence) (jarring disturbance over the phone line)

Her : What is it ?

Him : Nothing

Her : Hmm...You consider me your life (?)....

Him : (silence)

Butterscotch

It was July...or maybe August. The skies looked so through the windows during these months. The years had been excruciatingly slow. The helplessness of each month, week...moment kept making profound incisions into his restless heart and his paralyzed body showed the effects. His body lay motionless on the bed by the window. He had learned to accept his immobility. The turbulence within him manifested itself with glorious fury when he stayed like this...and strangely he found peace in this turmoil.

He quit medications now. Just as he had quit the hope to revive both on the insides and outside. The irony, however was, his body's condition did not worsen as he had hoped. It stayed the same. He never had his way with hope.

Monsoons cast their banal curse on the skies as they evoked dark profanity instead of the pristine blue for which they are  known. Drops from a past shower followed each other down the glass pane and finally trickled down to somewhere below where he could not see them anymore. Drops that seemed like the tears he made her shed, which lost into silence. Silence - that crept between them after the events that had transpired.

Sun rays streamed through wisps of clearing clouds grazing the stretches of green grass fields at a distance. The wilted blades revived to greet the sun before the next spell of shower would wash them down again. In spite of whatever had come to pass, he had regained his lost faith in Divinity. Her well being had restored the faith. This calmed a part of him down Lately, he had been remarkably calm when amidst all the seeming misery and apparent agony, things had started making sense to him. A realization of the delivery of divine justice reinforced his belief in the Almighty. This sinner had met his nemesis. It all made sense.

         

He knew that was it...

Thin plumes of smoke curled up from somewhere like strings hanging from the skies and merged into the air. Although the brilliant city lights dazzled at a distance like a million glowing sunsets, a darkness grimmer than death sank to the deepest bottoms of his heart. The realization that there would no longer be the warmth of her touch nor the glimmer of her eyes, loomed menacingly over his heart. Pain had been gnawing at his heart for long then, but this time he could feel a strange void forming within. An angst, much threatening than he ever had encountered, had started spreading roots into his soul.

 

They kept walking along the forlorn lane which was poorly lit partly by the night lights and partly by the dimly glowing street lamps. "Wish I could hold her so close that nothing could ever separate us again", he thought. Thoughts like this frequently occurred to him but this time it had a certain sense of hopeless desperation lurking within . "If only this moment froze in a timeless loop and we could keep walking like this forever", She mumbled almost saying that aloud.Too engrossed in the moment, he hardly heard it.

They crossed another bend in the tortuous lane. Minute after minute kept ticking by as they kept walking hand in hand. They stopped when they knew they could go no further.The sun was on the verge of sinking below the abyss of the horizon. Unlike always, it was leaving without the promise to show up the next day. 

They just stood still for sometime facing each other, hands held, fingers entwined. Words couldn't make their way to the lips...nor could tears to their eyes.

Even as they sensed the inevitable ruthless gust of fate that was to follow, a faint hopeful flicker, which had forever been there in their hearts, denied to go off. Their eyes were now blurry, for a moment losing vision of the harsh reality. Clogged up emotions were now wringing their existence as they bore witness to their own dreams being stifled.

They moved an inch closer to each other. He stopped down his neck a bit and she stood up on her toes a little...leaning towards him. Their eyes which had been locked on each other slowly closed..as their lips softly touched...

...Thus they kissed and parted.  

  

Kismat se tujhe tera pyar mil gaya

Khubsurat humsafar dildar mil gaya 

Tu jeeta nahin naseebon ke is khel mein

Sach toh hai ke main khud se hi haar gaya 

Kahin nazron se teri sawera ho

Kahin awaaz teri gunjti hi rahe 

Kahin khusbu teri phoolon mein khilti mile

Kahin zulfon se teri ghata ghir aaye 

Kabhi aahat se teri kahin suraj dhale

Kabhi sanson se teri kahin sargam ban jaye

Kabhi teri muskaan se dhoop khile hase 

Kabhi tere aansuon se sawaan baras jaye

Har manzar mein tera manzar hai

Har ehsaas ne tera ehsaas dilaya

Har shaaks mein basa bas tera aks hai

Jane kyun bas tu hi mujhe na mil paya ?

Pyaar kab kisi ka pura hota hai...Pyaar ka to pehla akshar hi adhura hota hai

 

 

 

..Jugni sochan de vich khoyi
Jugni sochan de vich khoyi
Dhoondhe kise de vich oh koi
Dhoondhe kise de vich oh koi
Oh ishq de 'ich kamli hoyi
Oh ishq de 'ich kamli hoyi
Jugni sochan de vich khoyi
Dhoondhe kise de vich oh koi
Oh ishq de vich kamli hoyi
Bhaaron hassi andron royi
Naale pak mohabbat kare saayi pir merya jugni ji
Ae ve..

 

You are the Spirit...

 Courtesy : Jugni Ji (Coke Studio/Cocktail)

Smoke Dreams

Watery eyes so drained of sleep

Promises unmade but have to keep

With this day in the cradle of doom

The heart gulps down its own gloom

The hour of the shadows sigh and grunt

Why did we severe our hands on the blunt ?

Smoke dreams now just smother in flame.

The soul has none but it to blame
A mindless pursuit of a soul lost,
seeks out faith but shatters trust.

Those sand castles now stand in abandon

cry and plead the waves to crash upon.

Smoke dreams now burn in deserted darkness

They sting and bite which once did caress
Then guilt gusts the restless shame
airs the fire and gashes inflame

Smoke dreams now quiver to their swan song

Prick, pain and pine so young...

Life is not a snowflake

Joy and Sorrow

in the words of Kahlil Gibran

...Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow." And he answered: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater." But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall....

You know...Death doesn't kill a man. It just kills the body...A man actually dies when his dream dies !

Ek din jab mujhe tanha dekhoge
afsosh na karna ki hum saath ho sakte the

Afsosh toh hum karte hain ki hum ji rahe hain
Sochte hain ki tum meri zindagi ho sakte the

khud ko kaid kar liya hai maine tum me
jab saaare asmaan mere ghar ho sakte the

Dard ki aah rooth ke aati nahi labh pe
Kehte hain hum bhi aaj muskaan ho sakte the