Eraser

Wipe it off!
Throw away the remnant rubber pieces
they scare me
with the possibility
of reforming those words
that they had just erased

Reaching for the rainbows!

I'm embarking on my journey to Cumbum- my dear native land of simple joys. My excitement knows no boundaries, as this is a return after six years. But the added tag of shooting a travel documentary there is what is making me apprehensive.

Yes, a long aspired wish- almost 5 years of meditating on that later- I'm finally making it. There are still a million ways in which this shoot might not happen, and I'm hoping none of those ways interfere.

I badly want to do this documentary. First and foremost, for my dear Cumbum Thatha- as a dedication to him and his life.
Also for that wonderful gift of childhood that it gave me.
And thirdly, to fill in what my life is missing these days- self-sufficient calm.

I am asking all of you who read this to just send a wish and some strength floating towards me. It is a very important trip, and I hope it goes well.

Please put in a second of prayer for me. This means a whole lot!

Cumbum... here I come...


P.S: In case you want to see what the original inspiration was, these three posts below would help. Reading them, Arvind Caulagi suggested I think of making a film. THAT was the moment that has changed a lot of things in life.

Thank you Arvi!

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

DESPAIR!

Half our battles are fought alone. Struggling to grapple with people almost takes half our everyday life away- people and their capacity of cruelty, people and their inability to express, people and their non understanding of things.

I'm struggling with this now. I am happy. Really really happy in life. But there are so many things that plague me. Things that bother me.

I don't know where to run to. I see walls or opinions all around me.

I need my mentor. That one person who's always been elusive. MY mentor. The one who shall be there to knock me on my head and drive in some sense as well us thump me on my back and propel me forward.

So confused! So confused!
I feel like a million people are existing inside, ordering me around, telling different things. Does life necessarily have to be so cruel as we grow up? And people crueler?!

Does the world know that nothing cuts open people as much as words. Ah the power of words!!!

And I hate to see people and things drift away from me.

Can't wait for my trip. I just want to find some things out for myself. I want to snuggle back into the childhood space where life was simpler, world was nicer and my own happiness depended on smaller things!

For really, nothing and no one is going to do that for me. There is no mentor. No nothing.

Revive

twang twang
metal twang!
a pluck of a string
some strange guitar
nice-voiced guy hums
a melody
in alien tongues.
And it soothes me
pours some invisible
hot fuzzy liquid
in a place
where once was my heart

I hear a faint beat.

Short Story-4

"I love you, Harry. You make me feel like a person. Like I'm me... and I'm beautiful. " Marion slurred in the film.

She rewound the disc and replayed it.
"I love you, Harry. You make me feel like a person. Like I'm me... and I'm beautiful. "
She flung the remote and walked away from the room and into her study.

"Lies", she wrote, "Films are lies. They make us believe in something that does not exist. They are like little 'how to' programs that try to tell us what life, love, truth, expression, sadness, happiness etc should be. The writer's ideals of these concepts are what we see fashioned on screen and what we, religiously look for in our own little lives. And that is the reason why all our love seems stale, our happiness too less and our sadness overtly dramatic. And this is why I have decided to stop watching films. I have ruined my life enough by aping everything that comes on the screen. And I shall no more. "

And she broke the nib, as if having declared a death sentence!

Short Story 6

She tried writing. Over and over again. Her mind was not able to siphon its thoughts and articulate what she was feeling. The prose froze, she stupidly thought.

Untitled 8 was opened and not one thought emerged that had any interesting bent to it. She typed blah as her status message in every possible social forum.

And she closed all the documents without saving them. She shut down her computer. She crawled into her bed.

Sometimes, one should never try to write, she sighed to herself and slept.

Short Story 3

(for all those who are puzzled by these sudden short story series- my fiction project begins next. I'm just freeing my mind and pen by these tales of randomness.

DISCLAIMER: The themes might be influenced by my own life or of people and things around me. But by no means are these stories chunks of my life or anyone else. THIS IS PURE FICTION.)

The idle familiarity of home calmed his frazzled nerves. Finally...finally he could rid himself of all those clawing agonies that had plagued him through morn and dream.

Home was the best eraser to wipe away pages and pages of things you never wanted to be associated with, but had inevitably got yourself mixed with.

The smells of that single layer of dust that somehow managed to always stick to the sofa cushions acted like a balm. The faint sounds of the radio from the kitchen across the bend of the corridor, sounded like a lullaby. He sank deeper into the sofa and told his mind that nothing could go wrong anymore. He had got his soul back.

Short Story-2

That was so long ago, she mused. Her limbs ached with a kind of tiredness that was not just physical. Yes, age had finally caught up with her, after running a furlong behind in the marathon of life.

She shook the dust of the cloth. It was lying like a rag in the corner of the room. She remembered the exact moment she had cast it off. Tearing it into shreds, fat drops of tears wetting its surface, and a guttaral cry of hatred and the throw to that forgotten corner.

Long ago suddenly seemed like now. The memories had just played their trick on her, all at once intensifying the simmering flame of thought and evoking everything.

She didn't cry this time. She felt the texture of the cloth, and with it, its memories and smiled. It didn't really matter anymore. But she felt tired, very tired for having to go through the motions of the past once again.

She threw the cloth back into the forgotten corner and decided she needed a nap.

Short story 1

A raw fear gripped her. The dream had been too vivid, too beautiful. She had lost herself in that dream- letting all the beauty ensnare her and in all abandon, she had let go of her hold on herself.

And she had woken up. Crudely. From those images of pristine perfection. To the stark drab graying walls of her leaking room. To those flaky patches of concrete still struggling to hold on to the wall with invisible ivy hands. To that wooden skirting that was paling and crumbling in parts and annoying her by their presence and absence.

She had known somewhere, when the dream began, that it was a dream. But why then did she allow herself to sink in its embracing waters?! She had lived through the carousing ways of happiness and mortgaged sanity for it.

And now- she was left with nothing but fear. Fear of the craving gnawing crushing emptiness that she once called her heart. It was not there and she wanted it.