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She didn't know why it made her feel the way it just did,

Maybe centuries of dark, shapeless emotions that she's hid,

No, not grief or anger -- just blank happy days.

When this wasn't the only option -- she's had other ways.

When she'd known someday she'd give her dreams wings,

When it wasn't her death knell -- the hawk circling in rings.

When she'd known she could wish the sky bright red,

When she'd known she could wake up the man who was dead.

Yes, the early days of a blurred, distant childhood,

Days to which she'd run back to if she just could.

'Coz then she turned into a pilot when she pleased,

Or in a moment of frenzy a painter unleashed.

Sometimes just a flying, free and happy lark,

Sometimes like her dad who wasn't afraid of the dark.

Dark, yes dark.....

Thats what made her feel the way she just did,

Thats what made her hide what she'd hid,

No, not grief or anger -- just blank happy days

When she wasn't forces to acknowledge the dark,

She'd had other ways.

Another Dawn

In the wee hours of the morning, when the world was still asleep and the street lamps cast a sickly yellow hallow on the dirty, dinghy, mud-streaked city streets, she woke up. With the air of a cautious cat she stretched herself, savouring the feeling of early morning crispness, punctuated by that feeling of pure bliss that the 5 a.m wind brings with itself. Then, with one eye still closed , she cast a look around her bare one-room home -- that is, if a bed, a mirror, a bookshelf and a few utensils -- all of then put under one roof with all their respective incongruity, could be called a home.

She walked into the bathroom -- a modest one shower, one commode affair. Then, wrapping her long fingers around the tap -- with a convergence of soft skin on rusted metal, she wound it open. Water ran. A flimsy silver ribbon. Tiny drops raced each other where the water leaked through the plumbing. So much like us, she contemplated. So much like our own mundane lives , so much like the everyday race, the mindless everyday race. A society which is happy within its congested, self imposed barriers. A society which is, metamorphically speaking, faceless, anonymous. A society where every action is merely another ritual, where human and humane connections are lacking. Everything is just a big show...a thousand different people, raising a thousand different shutters, in a thousand different rooms.

She comes back to the present. Into the ugly picture of modern urban squalor that she so detests. Back into the sordid, half-dozing half-awake society that she'd rather not be a part of. She splashes water on her face, keeping her eyes shut, almost as if tasting the feeling of leisure on the back of her tongue, trying to make the feeling last like a child trying to drink the froth even after the glass of milk is long finished. The drops run down her face, caressing her features, making her more perceptive to the world spinning around her, yet, pushing her further into her pensiveness. From somewhere in the distance, rock music drifts into her ears. She almost smiles at the bankruptcy of life around her. It intrigues her -- so many meaningless actions, so many soulless individuals -- yet, somewhere, somehow, bound by ropes that will never break to let them free....or maybe, they will never break the ropes to let themselves free -- not that they can not, they will not.


She lets her hair open -- it falls, a soft curtain of black, gracing her shoulders. And then beyond the window, dawn breaks out. Myriad shades of red and yellow and orange interwine and fall across her face. The dawn. Finally. Creeping almost furtively through the window. It erases the darkness. Lightens the lives. And even if it can't wipe out the ugly facets of mundane existence, it successfully disguises it, bathing everything in its gentle radiance. She breathes. She's found what she was looking for. And there, in the midst of annhiliation, she feels alive.

Reflections

There's a girl in the mirror,
She's crying tonight
And nothing i say will make her alright.
I ask her whats wrong,
She says its her heart,
Its broken n torn n rips her apart.
I look a little later,I'm scared of my find
She's cut up her wrists, she's out of her mind
I look in there again, and what do I see?
The girl is lying dead...
And the girl is me.

Seventeen Years

A little pink dressed doll,
Three tiny steps, a stumble, a fall.
A frown, tears, a toothless smile,
Holding onto her hand all the while.
Before I knew it had begun,
My life's train had started to run.
Started on a journey unknown,
With people I loved or sometimes alone.


Stations came and stations went,
As I began to realize what she had meant
When she whispered words of wisdom into my ear-
Taught me to be honest, brave, not to fear.
And thus had begun a journey, seventeen years long,
Now I stand still to speculate the right, the wrong.


The first few years of crying before school,
Pretending to be aliens, playing the fool.
The monotonous hum of ' Twinkle twinkle'-
Makes me smile now, makes my forehead crinkle.
Then the world of blackboards n desks,
Which I began to love,
Her serene smile - as fresh as a dove.
The smell of chalk- dust lingered on,
And ink pot blues made us move on.
A passenger on the 'Childhood Mail',
I learnt to succeed and to fail.

With teenage years came broken hearts,
Tears galore and poisoned darts.
Some true friends stuck till the end,
Now we're seventeen,
Here the road divides and bends.
Frenzied discussions over cups of coffee,
Fighting with my brother for that lone toffee.
The years gone by make me smile,I feel content- satisfied.

Mixed feelings grip me now,
As I am yet to embark on another journey,
Into a world of 'why' and 'how'.
I walk down a lane - new, unknown,
Saying goodbye and casting a last look,

On the receding carriage of my childhood.