Short Story- 18

(Attempt at a piece of love-writing. Bear with me if it sounds dumb and hollow! :P)

Last night, you came in my dream. After...what...ten months?! And today, I've not forgotten you. Yet.

All those words are coming back. The ones you used to sweet talk me to silence. How could I speak? Words seemed so inappropriate. I was hoping my silence was more eloquent.

The same colour rushes to my face now as it did when you used that voice of yours to claim me for your own. This time, the colour rises for other reasons- anger? pain?

Or is it embarassment? At having bared open my soul to you and let you camp there? It took me so long to painfully pull out keg after keg that firmly kept your tent down. And every time I removed a keg, my flesh hurt. Smarted with all the love I had just imagined.

Thank god for the distance that separated us- then and now. Blessed distance that kept me safe from my vulnerability.

But sometimes, I wonder, would distance have actually made these plain talks, real? Made meaning of what seems like a stretch of once-upon-a-times?

Today you refuse to go...image stuck in my eyes. Persistance of vision and memory. The colour of your smile...once a cool aquamarine to my senses, now a murky un-understandable brown. Those little crinkles around the corner of your mouth...perfect geometric lines chiselled on to your face, now an ambiguous clutch of arrows shooting out everywhere. And then those almost brown eyes...aah... those that were both warm and cool, trusting and loving; now an intangible white mass with a black pinprick for an iris!

What happened to you? the you I knew, talked to, laughed with and shared life with? Did he die? Did he disappear? Did all the hopes and promises sublimate?

You have changed, and hence, I have changed, and when in dreams we meet, we live another lifetime, the one I once wished into my life!

*****************************************************************************

Coming soon... the journal pages from my two week trip to Landour(the lovely lovely world of Ruskin Bond)! :)

Blogsville, I am back! :D

Short story- 16

She scribbled and a tear smudged the paper. She folded the sheet and gave it to the grave-etcher. Her eyes looked pained. She nodded and departed, leaving him standing with the folded bit of paper.

He picked up his tool bag and slung it on his shoulder. He opened the paper.

"Here lies the grave of a coward who couldn't appreciate the beauty of things he had. Who played a million lies throughout his life. A man, who despite being loved truly, did not want it. A man who died, in the end, wishing to change his past. May his pitiable soul rest in peace."

Short story 8

Somewhere, by the sea, Krishna laments, playing his flute. I can hear its faint notes. For all the games he has played- with minds, hearts, lives... he laments.

"I too am a mere toy of fate," his song claims. A plaintive note arises. A struggling breath, choked with tears he dare not shed in front of those who worship him, finds its way through bamboo shoot and musical voids and begs for forgiveness!

The sky. The sea. The earth. Early stars standing testimony for the cosmos. And the dying embers of a smouldering sun lining the horizon. He prays to the Panchabhootams through his music, pleading to be relieved from his bounden duty of playing his crafty game- turning kin against kin, twirling destiny between his thumbs.

The faint sounds still visit on rainy days like this one... Between the patter of the drops, I almost hear Krishna's sobs. In the breeze, I still can hear the lull of his flute and when the raindrop touches me, I feel a love so pure, so gentle and so trusting. Who else, but Krishna could touch that way?