A Recurring Question

It is not many times when I've asked this question to myself -

What is this all about? Why are we here? What's really up?

Are we here to earn and build castles, or to understand the Universe, or to understand ourselves, or to understand a higher being we call God, or to work for the common good, or to live life whatever freaking way we want to and have fun.

I don't know at this point of my life, whether I shall ever find it's answer. Or if I do find would it be a general one or specific to myself. But regardless, whenever this question pops up, I can see life flowing by and it's like a moment when you reach a bus stop, and suddenly look outside the window to see where you've come to.

Life is an opportunity to live.

Today as I left home, trapped in my own synthetic mental dialog, I saw a glimpse of death. Or more appropriately post-death. And while I drove ahead, the image of that young boy, a deceased soul, filtered the running, executing view of the Universe around me - pedestrians walking by, bikers racing around, shops opening, items being sold on road-side stalls, children going to school, mothers holding their hands probably asking them to study well.
What's the purpose of all of this if in fact one day we all have to reduce to cold flesh and dried blood. Why did I study Mathematics for hours, sat in thousands of exams, got compared against millions in competition, fought for that better seat in a bus or train, hoped for that lucky draw to bring me a tiny speck of immaterial happiness, argued with numerous believing my solutions could fix their lives, when the same fate awaits us without exception.

Then an image came to my mind - one of a Giant wheel.
Life is an opportunity to ride a huge and long and tall Ferris wheel.

We're all riding this Giant wheel of life, and we all have been given an option to live this experience the way we want to. All through these ups and downs, some of us want to corner ourselves, hide our faces and hope the ride is over soon, while others want to spread out their arms, open their eyes wide, let the wind blow them away as they shriek in sheer madness. And while we're all thinking and spinning strategies about the most optimal seat, the position of least deflection, the orientation which will provide the best comfort, being at a better or higher or worse or lower location than Sharma Ji's son, we never really know when we have to get down. When it will all just end. Maybe for you reading this, maybe for someone you dearly love. When your parents shall say Goodbye, or you'll welcome a tiny soul to occupy the seat adjacent to you - your little baby boy. The wheel still rotates, and shall forever do. But not for me or you. For our tokens are limited, and all I can do is to be the best of myself through these ups and downs and rounds and rounds. And money? Why hold it tight closer to your chest, when none shall accompany you when you get down.
For while you're on the ride, architect your life the way you want to. Don't look at other cabins because you don't belong there, and they don't belong to where you are.

If you're reading this till here, probably some of this did click with you.
Anyway, if it did or did not, I'd just say till when we're both here on the Ferris together, let's not waste any more time finding answers.

Simply put, let's chill.

The Incomplete - A Tower of Memories

You spun threads of dreams like you were God. Now in the darkness you stare with eyes bloodshot.

The PJ
The Pact
The Song
The E-mail
The Lap hug
The Apology
The Question
The Toe Fight
The Bike Ride
The Digital Kiss
The Belly Dance
The Arm Wrestle
The First Chicken
The Butterfly Kiss
The Dharamsankat
The Balcony Climb
The Breakup Stories
The I'm Watching ya
The Hill-station drive
The Dating Like a Pro
The Entangled Fingers
The Hugs from behind
The First Song For Her
The Tour to the village
The Warm Winter hugs
The Good Night Selfies
The Smiley World Wars
The Leftie Birthday note
The Online-Typing Loop
The Salsa Dance Classes
The Ass Smiley Proposals
The Morning Dhaba Drive
The Resonance of Madness
The Chocolate Ecstacy Kiss
The Cooking For Each Other
The Midnight Horror Movies
The Whispering from Behind
The Metropolitan Exploration
The DSLR Friendzone warning
The Playing with Her Long Hair
The Sleeping Wrapped Up Baby
The Perfect Duck-Face Challenge
The WhatsApp Deactivation target
The Designer Valentine's day Cards
The Getting Lost After Dropping Ya
The Date Planning and Management
The WhatsApp Rhyming message Wars
The Birthday Night Automatic Response
The Huge Building Terrace Midnight View
The Thinking Of Thinking What I'm Thinking

Let their empty hollow corpses rot every inch of what you were to give, never to be given; what you were to receive and never to be received...

A Forgotten Diminished Past - 1

The days did move, but moved bit slow. Klarke kept looking forward to eventful adventures, but none could excite him to the core. That day too, not so differently, was ordinarily interesting. As he entered the Ceremony Hall for Inauguration with his colleagues, everything around him seemed amusing, yet too moderately so. The sanguine walls striving hard to live up to the young enthusiasm of Program participants. The sound bleakly escaping through fissures amidst the Auditorium door flooding a barren Hall with tentative promise of activity. The floor which bore harsh marks of age stamped by feet of men with a vision who walked looking at the sky. A stall with colorful exhibits decorated with posters to proclaim a struggle for transformation of but many lives, and a young lady by the stall with a delicate unemotionally touching smile. Curious faces standing close examined colorfully crafted artifacts being sold - a setup that did not exist at equilibrium with the gnawing sadness of those walls.

It was then when Klarke moved an inch closer to this strange feminine face, glimpsing through the angles of her lens to find a definitive purpose to this setup - A story. She smiled modestly, her words bridging the logical gap between how these items were manufactured, and how Klarke himself could be a source of motivation for the women behind the activity. Livelihood, as he understood, culminated itself from a vertical to be studied as part of this program, to such beautifully crafted wallets, bags, bookmarks - small items which spoke of an untold story. A story of this a new beginning of a few women who woke up with a vision to create a change. Of little children with unborn dreams in their eyes, watching aliens from cities transported to their lands to talk about migration, sustainability, education, prototyping, marketing, and everything else that made them fly higher into fantasies of unknown terrains - a world beyond the borders of wet mud, mooing cows and the essence of fresh village air.

All this would come back to Klarke as days progressed, and certain people would become so special that years later when he'd recall moments which defined his life, a blurry image of this young lady with a delicate unemotionally touching smile would flash for an instant a bit too long. But that moment it was the distraction of a child-like curiosity that made him smile back thanking her for enlightening him with this piece of knowledge. Soon after he would turn back to the Hall where but a few faces rose with this strangely familiar streak of passion and curiosity. Sans the seat belt, this session was an official roller-coaster introduction to an experience that Klarke would later define as life-changing. For the first time, he took a vow which penetrated deep in his consciousness and promised itself to transform the person he'd be to not just exist for himself, but live for happiness.

Dinner soon after arrived, and he found his food packet on his lap, comfortably sandwiched on the stairs between a lady and a gentleman - both with forgiving, yet sparkling faces. They talked a lot, and as words escaped and were absorbed, there was an unabridged flow of resonating emotions which were to convert in life-long bonds to be. What was to follow was a bus ride to an intermediate stoppage on their journey - a small school by the village. Years after the extinction of his physical childhood, he slept under the stars. He dreamt with eyes open, and breathed existential freedom under open skies. His new dinnertime buddy joined him for this quest, and the last words they shared before dreams consumed both of them was 'Unbelivable'. It was a few hours into the darkness of a rotating night sky when he felt drops of water on his eyes. The first monsoon rains. They came and blessed both of them with a love that was unknown to this kind of city dwelling species. A few raindrops slid past Klarke's lips and he knew what elixir of immortality would taste like. He could have jumped all night like a little child who's found his most prized toy, but the logic in his left hemisphere reminded of a pending schedule, and so he followed his friend to sleep on the classroom floor inside, stealing a space close to a window from where the melody of tiny droplets eloping with the Earth below was the most beautiful lullaby.

Look Up!

Look Up by James Ellis.

An Internal Rejuvenation - Gramya Manthan '14

It was Sunday night when I felt my feet touch the Earth at Ghaziabad Junction, though my consciousness still floated freely some remotely 500km away, in a small unknown institute called Indus.

Two days at Gramya Manthan* did rotate my world by a complete 180 degree, transporting me back in time to make me stand on the same fields where I met my evidential existentiality, unencompassed passion for creation, deep volcanic love, and a fire, of which the last remains made me board a train to Kanpur the next day of my Mumbai to Delhi flight.
New faces decorated with expressions virgin and hungry, with that fresh light of curiosity sparkling in those eyes did make me feel newborn-like. The stark contrast of veteran Youth Alliance made me appreciate the design behind the event - a carefully crafted, evolving journey towards a mysterious promise of self-actualization. But then that interpretation eludes the personal experiential by-products.
With senses enveloped in anxiety, as I stepped out of Mahabodhi Express on the Friday night, I knew this small odyssey will bring back impossible memories. And as I stood there by the station gate, waiting for my volunteer friend's company, I realized my hypothesis would indeed be most accurate. I captured those lights which claimed my destination to be Kanpur, and our smiles with my friend finally met me. A quick upload was just what I needed to let other alumni-counterparts know what they missed. It suddenly felt promisingly carefree again, as our auto rickshaw sped furiously past local civilization, just outside the gates of Pathar College, which strangely reminded me of my Banaras Hindu University gates. Scurrying in the narrow lanes of the University, our vehicle reached Swaminathan Auditorium, and as I got down I felt eyes, that I guess to be new participants', squinting in the dark far away, curious as they were to know their companions for the next 9 days. But for then I walked ahead, so as to meet and thank that army of volunteers behind the scenes - my friends who were the architects and designers behind this huge to-be-experience.
It was soon felt how peculiar Gramya Manthan as a program will be, as we all succumbed to a down-to-earth feast. Literally did I mean so by down to earth, as when we sat down on roughly cut stone tiles, I saw the beaming delight in those new eyes for they seemed to be welcoming a change already. Amid modestly edible dal, rice, chapatis and aalo, we ate compassionately, in that ecstasy of being but strangers to all, yet belonging to that moment almost like a family.
Post dinner, an internet-free loosely careless ecosystem shaped up as we all sat in a circle on the garden grass, and beautiful sub-sonic vibrations phenomenalized not much to talk, but too much to be shared. I knew I'd hate myself for it, but I did speak on. I spoke of stories, of why life was beautiful when questioned and tortured, and snapshots of Gramya Manthan '13 which flashed back in my mind as times that almost did not exist, yet those deeply engraved scars on my being reminded me that they surely did.
Promising enthusiastic Young men and ladies with enigma in those beautiful eyes surrounded me, and the beast inside me wanted to savor the knowledge and logic behind those smiling faces. My mind humbly reminded me that our times of GM'13 were gone, and all I could do was touch a few lives and enroll a few as to-be-remembered companions. And so I looked forward to walking up Saturday morning to taste my bit of the delicious experiential recipe that lay ahead.
The sky was blue in the most beautiful hue, and as untouched freshness of that air filled each molecule of what constitutes me, standing on the rooftop, I spread my arms to encompass the beauty that nature gifts us every morning. I felt like a carefree young boy, slowly walking around with eyes eager to watch and never forget those passing moments. This was my day of conquest, conquest over negatives that I had been pinning on myself for those 365 days of past. It was my day of embracing life with a smile of difference and hope.
As I walked downstairs, I saw three souls walk out of their caves, my to-be-friends-and-more, and we joined in common cherish to welcome the beauty of the morning. We walked on, capturing the serenity of tall old tress with branches hugging the road like a grandfather's embrace. The birds were in ecstasy and sang their love for sweet droplets of rain, and their soon to being one with the thirsty Earth below. A water tank reminded me of a persisting crave - a meaningless adventure I wanted to strike off my to-do. Climbing up the stairs seemed to humbly assist the disposal of my acrophobia. I was somehow blind to the view which my companions appreciated, but my eyes beamed with cheer on reaching the top of incomprehensible accomplishment. This was but one freedom - the freedom of open experience. Counting the stairs, math helped us approximate how high we just climbed, but no estimates of how high our spirits did flow.
As I walked beside her, I talked about various romances of life, and her curious eyes seemed to absorb the essence in it's entirety. She was young and untouched by scars, but her stories reminded me of mine. Peacocks, unsuccessful-climb-up-old-trees, ancient ponds, droplets of future rain, and her footsteps, which we counted for quantitative enlightenment up to the 1.5 kms we walked, yet without evaluation of how much we subconsciously traveled.
Back in our camp, my camera captured young innocent smiles, and the hard work of our veterans which that inner eye could comprehend. We sat in circles, all but equals, and talked about the power that individual consciousness generates. Faith, Listening, Empathy,  Dreams, Design, Transformation - Internal and Worldly, Perspective, Discontentment for Progression and appreciating the Roots of our existence.
It was soon that we bid adieu to those beautiful grounds, to travel to the transformational lands of Indus, which for me was revisiting a bright star I would never wish to move on from. We sat together far away from that silence humming with tiny scattered sparks of activity in the bus. I made her let her hair loose, so she could feel cold breeze rapture past embracing each strand of her beautiful hair. She made me sing, husky as it would be in her words, and we laughed in convulsion of cheerful pleasure exploding inside.
The night did come, and as Indus flashed in it's permanence, those walls hiding aging mysteries of numerous stories, origin of some of which lay deep within me. The night to come was to carve another mark in memory, and like dodging laser-like censor of vision, we stole our way through unknown terrain, only to reach a peak from where stars so appeared just within our fingers' reach. We drew shapes up in the night sky coloured with moonlight shining bright, nicknamed the mighty interstellar beasts of Moon and Morning Sun, secretly traced the trajectories of dark and light clouds, and did stretch the bandwidth of mental existence, partly by words, partly by experiences.
The sun rose high, and I was to say Goodbye. Goodbye to those spirits who melted into mine and bound well to be friends and brothers. Goodbye to the amazing enthusiasm of a minuscule perspective-shift that Youth Alliance instilled. Goodbye to so many pending adventures, instances of which GM'13 made me live, but which had aged old in my memories now, to be catalyzed by stories of this new generation of Change agents.

*Gramya Manthan is a Self-Reflection-cum-Rural-Immersion program set in Rural Kanpur.
http://youthallianceofindia.org/gramya-manthan/

Een Inspiratie - Namesh Killemsetty

Namesh looks like a normal 'cool' guy when you first meet him. He would walk towards you and greet with his special big smile. Post that, the usual 'Where are you from?' etc.

It takes maximum 5 minutes after you're done with introduction (etc.), and Namesh would suddenly have begun your odyssey into his stories - stories lived and experienced. Ups and downs not in books, but felt and lived through in the real raw reality of itself.

So he would talk about a day when after depressing work at a job (for which he's extremely overqualified btw), he travels 3.5 hours in a local to his house, and discovers that there's been a robbery. Laptop gone, along with his branded jeans. He still keep kicking and surviving though. Amidst losing 12 kgs on shifting to a new city, being cheated by the company which employed him, and spending most of the time travelling and working stuff he would do in his sleep, he keeps faith. It's as tough as easy it sounds. And you can see that in his eyes.

And so randomly he would mention being selected for a conference by United Nations (one of the three people globally), featured on his University's website, on a newspaper, his experience working on his project, how lucky he would be at times and how proud he is about all of it now. It's impossible to not get awed by extreme levels of down-to-earth humility and compassion to keep living in the real sense of it.

A beer afterwards, you realize a throat sore of talking so much. You realize finding someone who shares that adventurous crazy part of you, and who, unlike you, has really lived it. You start realizing how important THIS time is, and how THOSE are the stories you are going to remember 30, 40, 50 years from now. Not how well that random project you worked on which got x billion dollars to the company (if ever!).

Namesh is a star to be. A star for himself. A star for all of us who are luck to know him personally. A true Inspiratie.

Namesh - The one NOT in Woodland shoes

-K

Klarke, I see you...

The Climb had been rough and he was tired. With bare feet he trudged slowly feeling the heat which soon was to disappear as the sunset was close, almost relishing the friction that scratched his feet as he traversed what was left of the tiny distance that separated him from his beloved... A sight so splendid that it blew him off...

He had reached at the perfect moment, the radiance of the sun as it turned a shade of red losing itself to the expansiveness of the pink skies as it enveloped the mighty mountains...

It wasn't just the visual but the entirety of the experience that had consumed his senses. He lived it as the breeze hit him with intensity, he breathed it ,embracing its essence that had now been ingrained deep within his soul... deep silence reverberating through him. It was an acquaintance known too well,something he felt as he paced slowly through the ghats back at Vanarasi... A oneness came about leaving him absolutely breathless and in sheer of awe of all that was him.

Soon it would be dark and the magnificence that lay in front of him would be gone Its hard to 'let Go' when it becomes a part of you,so essential to your being;a drug to the senses, benediction to the Soul Yet mortals as we are plagued with a fear to hold on.

He felt the pain as he rejoiced the exuberance of a connection felt so profound and it became hard indeed to let go

He was a Romantic, He was mighty...He was strong...
and before the darkness could completely shun all that was his,he was gone... To 'lose it' was the fear and now it was here but as he walked away he realised though its dark and the chimera of his dream was fading, yet in his heart he shall always retain the song...

Confession : A CRIME I committed

What was it that I could not control that day. That I could see it working, and there seemed nothing I could do about it than let it flow. It was not a reflex action, but what made me strongly feel that it is?

Looking in his eyes, I felt the demon that silently lay within. The demon of selfishness. But the demon was not his, it was mine. His eyes seemed to be a mere reflection of what lay within me, and this observation, devoid of all logic and reasoning, stood there in it's bare rawness confessing a strange truth.

"Yes I bribed him, who the fuck cares?" protested logic. Selfishness? It's not bad. All humans are inherently selfish, and it doesn't matter if I was too.

The gnawing reality lay like a dead body hovering upon me, much aware of the crime, much aware of it's implications - none in quantity, but as a irreparable stroke on the purest element of one's existence - Integrity.

Integrity - the source. Foundations of existence since unrecorded history, relying on a single boulder of symbolic strength. The bribe was not just a forced transaction, it was a scar on my integrity. A moment of lifelessness trapped me into the transition between the conscious and the sub-conscious. I stayed there looking at myself, as if leaving my body and watching me walk away into nothingness.

I still look back and wish it was different. Wish that the moment wouldn't have existed, or else I would have not let it haunt myself so long by just being simple honest. Honest to myself. That is what I shall be. After all, every cloud has a silver lining...

What Goes Comes Back

A simple straight curve, as an abstraction of reality, was ridiculing itself in its daunting darkness. Linear was it meant to be. Linear in all local terms concerning the self, and nothing more around it. With darkness encompassing an incomprehensibly evil halo of that ecstatic blindfold, the supposed odyssey was done with quick confident steps. Exotic were the ways - those evil intentions remote and invisible. Words were no longer  meant to be, but just to be. And thus it lived, travelling as a cursed promise, hovering as vultures over a dead decaying symbol of death. Death not from hate or guilt or greed - but from love - the pure passionate pain.

That mesmerising scent of an unreachable destination gaping into the infinite with its magnificent decaying efficacy gives birth to an unresolved contradiction. Contradiction of the poison at it's source, of a gnawing realization of a painful end, of ending into the nothingness of dark empty void. The curse lived on as a prodigious disciplinary righteousness of being haunted by an ultimate inflection of my own existence.

It all came back. The poison in those veins making them blue, with eyes turning black, and face already paler than death. Drops of rain flowing down deeper into unknown depressions of implicit self-retaliation. The destruction didn't pardon or excuse too proud with it's arrogance - a merciless rage to split the skull open, to reveal what unimaginable force no longer trapped inside would smile it's final goodbye and would bleed till those lips turn white. Till there is pain no more...

Zinda ho tum

Dilo mein tum apni betaabiyan le ke chal rhe ho toh zinda ho tum

Nazar mein khaabo ki bijliyaan le kar chal rhe ho toh zinda ho tum

Hawa ke jhokon ke jaise azad rehna seekho

Tum ek dariyan ke jaise lehron mein behna seekho

Har ek lamhe se tum milo khole apni baahein

Har ek pal ek naya samaa dekhe yeh nighaayein

Jo apni aakhon mein hairaaniya le ke chal rhe ho toh zinda ho tum

Dilo mein tum apni betaabiyan le ke chal rhe ho toh zinda ho tum....

Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai...

Jab jab dard ka baadal chaya

Jab gum ka saaya lehraya

Jab aasun palko tak aaya

Jab yeh tanha dil ghabraya

Humne dil ko yeh samjhaya...

Dil tu aakhir kyun rota hai

Duniya mein yun hi hota hai

Yeh jo gehre sanaate hain

Waqt ne sab ko hi baatein hain

Thoda gum hai sabka kissa

Thodi dhoop hai sabka hissa

Aankh teri bekaar hi namm hai

Har pal ek naya mausam hai

Kyun tu aise pal khota hai

Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai....

Yakeen

Pighle neelam sa behta hua yeh samah

Neeli neeli si khamoshiyan

Na kahin hai zameen...na kahin aasman

Sarsarati hui tehniyan...pattiyan

Keh rahi hain ki bas ek tum ho yahaan

Sirf main hoon...

Meri saansein hain aur meri dhadkanein

Aisi gehraiyaan...aisi tanhaiyaan...

Aur main...sirf main

Apne hone pe mujhko yakeen aa gaya.

Elishia

Elishia looks at you innocently and smiles, and suddenly life glows bright as the sparkle in her eyes infects you deep inside, and you’re too moved in that instant to absorb the intensity of her vibrations all at once, so you smile back a silly smile and you know how impossible it is to look away. But then she looks away herself, and the painful pleasure that dawns upon you makes you realize the fallacy of conceptual beauty you’ve known till that point of time. That how a delicate smile could disillusion age-old concepts of love and compassion established by the wise and the old, and establish forth a new meaning behind the youthfulness of the beauty in those eyes, thus imparting a beautiful meaning to beauty itself.

She looks back at you, and amidst deep silence you say so much of the unspoken love, of how badly you could give up anything just for her to keep looking in your eyes like that. But just in that moment, she would look away, close her eyes and smile, and you ask yourself if your thoughts were too loud, for the redness of her lips and the pink of her cheeks say much more than the richest of literature could ever even dream to convey. You want to believe that she feels you, that she loves the way you hold her hand and tell her how beautifully carved her fingers are, and how every entity of His creation could envy the softness of her skin, and much more, of the softness within.

And while you’re sitting down looking at her, wishing you could freeze that moment and make it stay like that forever and maybe even more, the hard unemotional reality strikes you painfully and you know she would have to leave you now, leave you alone on those steps where every moment would make you look up at Him and wish you lived that lifetime again and again just to be with her for that one single moment. And so you’d promise yourself to live every remaining quantum of time with her to the fullest, to softly caress her, to envelop her in your love compassionate and intense. But she would suddenly feel it and run so away far, hiding her spectacular aura behind the frame of her colourful spectacles, unintentionally softening more against you, in a way touching you strongly inside in a strangely painful manner which makes you smile on the outside but burn deep down. The lips would bid goodbye, but impossible it would be for the spirit to detach. But just then, a realization dawns upon you as you embrace her for the last time - a part of your stays with her and a part of her stays with you. Forever.

29-03-2013

HE
Living that moment of purest contradiction, she stood there looking deep into my eyes. Her soft hair traced the untouched curve of her face, her smile revealed the tempting softness of her lips. Impossible it is to stay away, to not look at her, to lock that temptation, which makes me wish I could touch those lips, feel her as she was my sketch - a part of me.

SHE
There he stood in front of me as we mounted the skies and beheld the serene the enamoring stillness of the spectacle that welcomed us.
The breeze playing with my disheveled hair as I stared in the depth of his eyes and felt the rhythm of life that filled his entire being with a subtle touch...In that moment the absolute seemed close!

27th November 2012

KLARKE opens his eyes, and a sudden gush of blood explodes through his veins making him suddenly feel the cold metal around his arms. As his pupils dilate, everything seems so white and pure. The serenity instills a hybrid emotion of beauty and enigma. He feels something beneath his nose - his breath – being alive! As he takes in the alien cold air into his system, a sudden curiosity shakes his inner foundations vehemently.

"Where am I?"

He wants to feel his arms and legs, but the force pulling him down is too strong. He blinks his eyes furiously to gain vision - desperate to push away the ghost of ambiguity clouding his consciousness with patches of fear and impatience. A 'tick tock' sound synchronous with his heartbeat catches his attention, and he looks up to see a blurry huge ball of light suspended over his head, with a bottle of medicine suspended up on his right, and a meter beeping some vital stats in electronic signals. His mind works out the equation, and he has no idea how he ended up being there - in a hospital.

He wants to feel his feet, his legs - to stand up and walk and explore this place of which he has no evidence in memory. But his body fails him badly, and he still feels heavily bolted down to the bed.

He looks towards the side, shuts his eyes hard, and opens them again to look at a beautiful slim face enveloped in fair slim hands, with long hair covering portions of her face seemingly possessive of that beauty. Christine sleeps like a little fairy on the chair beside the hospital bed, her face resting beside Klarke's left arm, as she seems to embrace his left hand and sleeps with her mouth slightly open like a little girl. Klarke smiles, though even smiling takes up a lot of effort. He moves his fingers and suddenly feels her soft lips. He forgets why he is there, and just keeps looking at her. Exhausted with ecstasy, he feels the pillow behind his head and closes his eyes, unable to take that ecstatic strain any more.

His hand leaves contact and he looks up to see Anastasia, who seems to have a complicated emotion spread across her face. Her eyes gleam with tears of happiness, but her forehead shows signs of pain and grief. But Klarke doesn’t want to think about this, and he smiles at his cute little angel, and remembers how she still takes care of him like good old college days. But he’s so angry at Christine for suddenly going somewhere and leaving him alone. He tries to gather energy to ask, but neither his body nor mind seems to have the strength to do that.

Anastasia embraces Klarke’s hands and goes out to call the nurse. The nurse enters and starts preparing an injection. Anastasia whispers close to his face – “Everything will be alright, Babe” and with a beautiful smile spread across her face still so full of worry, she silently leaves when the nurse indicates her that the patient needs complete rest.

It’s a warm sultry evening when Klarke wakes up to find the doctor standing beside him examining his Medical Record file while noting down readings from the beeping instruments. He has been unconscious for two days after the injection, the doctor says. Klarke can feel his strength come back to him in bits. Anastasia sits beside him, looking extremely exhausted. But even with that she manages to carry on her serenity and gives a strange comfort to Klarke. But the coldness of her face brings out a lot of unpleasant questions in his mind.

The doctor suddenly speaks up. He asks Klarke if he remembers anything before the ‘accident’. 

“Accident?”

He lays there in shock, in misery and pain. As his consciousness is less cloudy now – he uses logic, he shakes in agony, looks towards Anastasia and whispers -

“Christine?”

Anastasia is choked with tears and grief. She turns towards the doctor, who silently looks down and says –

“I’m Sorry.”

14th October 2012

KLARKE lie on his bed, looking outside at the beautiful painting-like scenery, embraced by the golden rays of the morning Sun.

It was truly miraculous, he thought, to find time to just lie there, without moving much. Feeling his warm breath while acknowledging the soft sunny embrace - much in contrast to the cold winds that struggled victoriously to enter the room aiming to challenge any entropy resistance. Everything else seemed to be a part of one game or another. Everyone was a player participating in a rat race – the result of which was silly moments of superficial satisfaction, too temporary to last even a microsecond on the Universal clock. But then, so was life, he accepted with a grin.
His last week at the University had been a strong evidence. It was strange, yet pretty self-explanatory, to see how people would sing songs of selflessness, while striving to push all others back when it came to their own race. This was a pseudo setup being worshiped since ages not recorded by human history, but which continued to infect the basic driving gears of our subconscious existence inside mortal structures of flesh and blood.
A hand gently moved over him, like being humbly jealous of the thoughts that occupied his mind. He glanced towards the delicate fingers – which seemed to draw random shapes on his bare chest. He remembered this illogical addiction of his - with how childishly possessive Christine would suddenly be for him at times. Earlier anomalies faded into nothingness, and he was wearing a smile gifted by the thoughts of the delicate figure lying on his side.
Mimicking legs using two of his fingers, he started a walk from her finger-tips, passing by her shoulders and neck, finally stopping on her lips, where his fingers skated over the crimson reddish shade. Christine, still in sweet slumber, squeezed into his curvature like a little child, her head resting on his chest. He could smell the scent of her soft hair, as they brushed past his face. He held her close, while the warmth from her breath on his chest increased their intimacy even more. He locked his fingers in hers, and kissed softly on her neck. She chuckled from the tickling, still half-asleep. She was like a snow-white charcoal sketch of his – just a lot more real. With his thumb, he traced the corners of her lips, like trying to smoothen the redness which seemed to increase more and more as she blushed. As he kissed on her forehead, she opened her eyes and closed them again, shrugging softly against the warmth of his body heat, intoxicated with pleasure. She looked at him – at the roughness of his young face, at those eyes which seemed to always say so much, feeling his strong arms hold her tight around her waist. She put her arms around his shoulders and bringing her face closer, gently stroke her nose against his. He gave a soft bite on the top of her nose, after which she giggled and hugged him tight. They stayed like that for a very long time.

K

6th October 2012

LAST night, Klarke sat looking up at the dull reddish moon, fresh after the full moon a couple of days back. A thought suspended in his conscience, like a copy of him, kept on talking without a pause. As he saw the gradient at the corners of the moon – sudden but smooth - reddish white light dimming into darkness of the night, he felt a deep connection with this gradient. Men were, he thought, like this gradient, sailing in the dark sky of our life.

We take birth as a bright white moon, glowing with a heavenly smile. Time passes on, and we rise – moving up the ladder. The glimmer seems to dull gradually, and spots of impact appear on our contour as we experience 'life' as it is. But the fight remains, and the light struggles to keep the darkness away. Teenage, adulthood, old age – they come and go gradually - a sharp contrast to the actual speed of our life where each moment seems so important, that we forget that all it is, is to rise one day, and set another.

And then this man reaches his peak. He stands conquering the darkness below him. His elegance is unmatched and unquestionable. But then he looks at himself – at his own dark spots. He wants to hide them, forget about them. But his life is an open book, inaugurated by none other than he himself, a book he would hate to read. 'Hate' was somehow inadequate – hate and dread, maybe.

But time is merciful, and all this passes away, like an obvious joke on all what was felt. The progress now, is towards the end. The man knows his inescapable destiny. Some wish to face it with a smile, others accept comfort in shooing the thought away.

Time would, meanwhile, sit on its couch, eating pop-corns, watching the second half of the movie – aware that soon it will have to get up and switch his movie off. It watches man, with his billion emotions, each given worth too exaggerated.

Klarke stopped the thought for a second, looked up again, and smiled. This was our success, he thought, the most successful failure. To be embedded immortal in stone, or to die in a gutter, seemed synonymous to him now. But his reflection was not to conclude here. Suddenly, he spotted a shooting star. The star seemed to smile at him, a humble calming smile. And Klarke was overtaken by a gust of joy – that there was, indeed, one exception!

The exception was love. An abstraction, and a reality. Suddenly, his conscience was filled with a billion thoughts – yet he felt he knew nothing about it – that there was so much more to learn – so much more to experience. The love when a mother watches her new born child. The love when a father ties your shoe laces on your first day of school. The love when a child sees his first toy. The love when a child watches his elder brother fight for him. The love in the eyes of the grandparents, as you touch their feet.

There was so much love around him, he felt delighted. Love, as he deeply felt, had the divine power to warp time. A long walk with a loved one passed away in a matter of microseconds, while a hug seemed to last a lifetime. He realized he had found a small scratch on the smiling ego of time, and this thought was highly elating.

He looked at his hands, felt love in abstraction, when for instance, he touched the dew on a morning rose, washed his bike, plowed the garden when he was a kid, made his first sketch, stood looking at the sunrise on the Ganges, took a deep breath of fresh morning air, and...embraced Christine's hands.

The thought brought back the pain lying dormant somewhere in his heart. He tried to recall if ever he was in love with a girl. He was together with a girl a year back, but that was more of a 'growing up' than love – at the same time, his recognition of the impurity that humans are prone to induce in the purest of gifts given by God. She was a passing phase, long gone, without leaving its mark on the sands of time, forgotten as quickly as the thought had come.

But Christine was an impossibility he would be in love with forever. Each time the name came in his mind, the brightness in her eyes filled his dark sky. She was like a shooting star – and he was the moon. For a couple of moments, she would come and his night sky would glisten with brilliance. He would lock his fingers among hers and get flooded with a divine warmth – a bidirectional connection of two souls. It was worth living life this way – howsoever temporary it might be. Klarke wondered - how easily this four letter word – love - stood powerfully facing two more four letter words – time and life. How easily the thought of Christine changed his conclusion that life was going to be a tragedy no one could avoid.

He wondered what Christine might be thinking at that moment. If she could feel his heartbeat increase more and more every time he thought about her. If she knew that Klarke could feel her scent enter his system and intoxicate him with her beauty.

Something inside him said - “Yes she does” and he wanted to think no further, say no further.

K

2nd October 2012

KLARKE had a talk with Christine on phone, today. Though the urge to hear her voice was stronger than the urge to breathe, it was he who did all the talking. Strangely, the reason was pretty clear - the lesser he heard her voice, the lesser would be the insatiable want to hear her more.

The conscious mind knew it pretty well – her camp starts today, and for the next 10 days, they won't be able to share a single message, a single word of everything that was impossible to be expressed in words. He collected himself and asked the formal and obvious questions, afraid to jump to the uncomfortable ones, from where there was no turning back. She answered his questions in her own sweet way, each word of her's hitting him like the world's strongest, most pleasant intoxication. He wanted to be drugged, to be carried away by those careless words to the lips which spoke them. The sweet notoriety in her voice was tempting and teasing – like she could actually see him trying so hard not to say it again and again – not to say how much he loved her and wanted to be with her.

Occasionally, she would chuckle, and Klarke imagined her smiling like the evening when they sat together holding hands, he caressing her slim fingers, looking into her eyes, noticing how her beauty could make angels swell in envy. He did not mention this. He knew of no known language with which he could communicate his thoughts in their pure original form. All he could say was 'Take care', with the same degree of pain and pleasure – pain of being so away from her, pleasure of still being able to love her more and more each moment.

Somehow he felt that she could sense the beating of his heart, and he could sense hers. The rhythm of two hearts, of two souls, so far away, yet so near, so synchronous and pure – it was like living in the childhood dream where everything was good, everyone was happy, there was no grief, no guilt, no despair, no hatred, just love...pure untouched love.

The 2 minutes 52 seconds on the phone were like a beautiful evening walk – by the sunset at the river bank, golden rays of the setting sun meeting the sharp corners of her smiling lips, her eyes looking into his while he puts his arms around her waist and brings her closer. Planting soft kisses on her neck, he whispers something in her ears, and they both – Klarke and Christine - together watch the sun hide behind another majestic beautiful evening.

Suddenly the crude reality of life strikes Klarke, and he knows its time. There is an uncomfortable silence lasting various microseconds – there is so much more to tell, so much more to talk about, and yet no means to express any of it now in that moment. The fight inside him finally ends, and an unknown voice unwillingly whispers - “Goodbye Christine”.

K

Klarke

Some men personify determination. Klarke was not better than them – he was the superlative. His personality radiated itself everywhere he would go – to the walls, to the machines, to the people around him. Sometimes it would make the aura uncomfortable for the ones who felt it, and made them almost certainly sure of standing not with a normal being as themselves, but with a divine heroic presence. But the chapter would not close there. It's not natural, they would say, in this age, for men with sharp determination to be honest and humble as well – words whose origin must certainly lie attributed to a prophecy or a vision of Klarke's, by the men who invented them.

He relished learning – and that seemed to be an unstoppable motivation towards his self-actualization. The level of detail with which he could absorb the observable enabled him to mix his essence with the unspoken beauty around him. Many a times, he would just stand close to random subsets of random universe, feel the rhythm, accepting it with a strange intimacy.

His sight was sharp, as sharp as his other senses of hearing, smell and taste. Somehow, they seemed to symbolize a non-stop information flow between him and his compliment – consisting of everything else. But the 'touch' was the most sensitive – his fingers would elegantly trace the outlines of a morning rose, like it was someone's most prized piece of art. With a pencil between those fingers, he could create abstraction and reality in unparalleled synchronization. With his thumb, he could feel the piece of a charcoal sketch freshly prepared by him – breathing, sensing, having a life of its own. For him, it was not just carbon spread on paper in a randomly ordered fashion, but the ability to give birth – to be a miniature God.

A die-hard romantic he would be. His philosophy about life - “Live each moment like its your last.” He could have silent abstract romances with the beauty around him – beauty not just noticed by normal humanly perceptions, but whose sole existence could make you forget the concept of 'me' and 'I', as you delve into a universal plurality of homogeneity. These moments were rare – rare but glorious, and for days altogether he would be mesmerized by thoughts of capturing it forever – giving it the immortality it truly deserves.

At times, he would imagine of a beauty surpassing all previous unchallenged notions in his mind. A strange consciousness would tell him the moment was near – he knew not why, he knew not when. He did not know the sweet beautiful pain that was to flood his heart. All he knew was that when the time comes, he and his lady would be intoxicated with the purest forms of emotions impossible to be captured by any known tools of human brilliance, including he himself.

K