Winter Solstice

The night whispers silent promises, reminisces unspoken moments.
I breathe in the cold air. Not quite the winter I was hoping for, but cold nonetheless.
A memory flashes and slips through.
Quaint.
The eyes look back, the smile haunts.
A skip, a heartbeat left behind.
The distance closes.
The laugh breaks through the silence.
I look around. I am standing alone with a smile marking my expressions.
The facade had fallen.
The stoic loneliness had long gone past.
As I move in, one last whisper brushes against my ears.
The breeze has died.
The chill hangs in the air.
The smile still rests warm.
I whisper back and hope the night carries it to where it is meant to go.

Time and Again

Why we live
Why we die
Inconsequential in time
A slipping breath
Inevitable death
What we remember
We still will forget
Remember the start
We do no more
Avoid the end
We try some more
The clock ticks
The hour chimes
On flows all times
Why we live
Why we die
The end is near
It is time...

A Tribute to the 11th Doctor
And the bow tie...

Sometimes Time Lords lie ;)

Alternative Violence

There is violence within me.

I felt that thought resonate with a gunshot. Then the walls broke and everything rushed out as if my heart was pumping it. I could hear my heartbeat as loud as the gunshot. Was I bleeding? Couldn't tell yet. The adrenaline had to come down first before I could notice anything other than my heartbeat and the absence of all other sound.

My ears popped. I heard a scream. Could it be my own? I realized I didn't recognize my own voice. That realization brought out a moment of introspect in the span of seconds within which my arms could move.

There is violence within me.

Like all others out there it pulls and pushes. Throbbing just under the surface like a caged beast waiting to explode the moment the cage craks or even strains just a little bit. A tormented beast that torments the very man made beast under its influence. To look at that reflected in the eyes in the morning when you brush or when you shave, to have it constantly reminding you of the sheer simplicity of solutions when adhering to its clear path.

That is violence....

I felt my body turn. There was a slight agitation to my movements that I couldnt put my finger on. Then it hit me. I was growling. A low guttural growl. That originated from the back of my throat and vibrated throughout my body. Maybe it even carried in my voice. Must have scared the people around me.

I was angry.

We are all such creatures, bound to if not controlled by our inner violence. We ignore or we supress it like society reminds. Keep it in check they say. The blood boils but reason should prevail they console. They who have been tormented by the same but have become pitifully reduced by it.

I felt some rush past me. It might have been a spectator that feared being a participant. Or maybe a person who just realized hi affinity for bloodsport and wanted to share it with other like minded folks. Social nature of man after all. Even in depravity they will seek companionship. Then someone laughed, at me I assume. Such a high pitched voice. As if he skipped puberty and was now compensating for it through this.

I was in pain, growing pain.

Some bathe in its glory. They take pleasure in satisfying it. The beast becomes their friend and then their master. Eventually consuming them. The weak and the pitiful take refuge in this self consuming snake's shadow and forego all reason.

Fools.

I looked for the source of laughter. Something was in my hand now. I just hoped it wasn't something valuable of mine. Like my kidney or an eyeball. There! A reflection. A glimmer of familiarity. The vision drenched in my sweat was hazy but the stupidity of a pitiful man trying to be bigger was visible even through that. Maybe they breastfed him till his teens who knew. I just wanted to hear him scream now in that high pitched compensation of manliness.

I felt the calm overtake. Reason taking over my actions but guided by a deeper need. I sought to fulfill it.

If only they would try to understand.

That inner violence is not a tool nor is it a measure. It is a part of you. Its uses are pointless. You can't remove it anymore than you can control it so why make the same mistakes again and again?

Because they can.

Two steps away.

I feel the violence in me. The pointless conundrums of life agitate me. The monotonous flow of thought and reason drives me insane. The boundaries, the restrictions, the measures and checks they put up umder the pretense of freedomor some other scam it pushes to drive out a reaction, as it should.

I just choose to express it alternatively.

Words that once we dvelved into to express thought and hide emotion, they serve the very purpose bastardized to suit my needs. Words that shape thought reason and drive logic can voice the pain and anger much better than violence ever could. Look at us otherwise. Like anarchists we seek to express. In joy we are violent. In love it stands true too. In hate as well. In victory we are violent and in defeat too. We celebrate violently and we mourn within it too. The greatest moments of our lives to the worst are marked by that lurking shadow of violence.

Its only when faced with such creatures can a thinking man be driven to violence. There could be nothing worse. The fools that harp about excitedly and get driven quick to anger over small things. Their violence over being meaningless and been shown that and reduced to their true nature, nothing, nihil, nada, void, they drive me to react within reason.

And eventually abandon it.

The head went through the window. No brain tissue came flying at me. So much for Tarantino.  The body went through. Finally I heard that oh so joyful scream. It was worse closer. There was definitely some emasculation in the fool's life. A few more shots and the act is fulfilled. The gun taken and now that dorothy was sent packing, the scarecrow, the lion and the tin man found a brain, balls and a heart respectively. Albeit of metal. Oz was not what they made it to be. Believe me. I was there.

In the end they make a violent man show his violence. That which he kept in check through thought and reason and courted with words.

Fools

Hyppcrites.

Dead.

I am violent...

Why would they make me show it....

Just for intervening in an argument over parking.

Retribution: The beginning of a graphic novel project....hopefully

Life needs payment doesn't it?

Every act, be it of love or hate, be it of violence or compassion. The moments spent with someone you love reduced to the memories you now carry or the greatest loyalties that are balanced out by the simplest of betrayals.The deeds we do, the crimes we commit, the burdens we bear are nothing but a price. A retribution that life seeks from all.

Every moment of our life demands a price for the life we give up and consume with every breath. For every moment of joy and for every shred of sorrow.This is life's retribution, be it for acts of our own or for another's. Life demands payment, a balance very elemental in its nature and basic in its need, yet great are its implications.

We all bear them.

We all pay them.

Water through sweat and tears.

Fire through passion and pain.

Air through every breath and whisper.

And earth through birth and death.

The heaviest price of all, it asks for blood.

How you pay the price is how you live the life you are cursed with. Once the price is paid death gives you redemption and solace..

Solitude

As the new year approaches I often get innundated with all these ideas by people for a pre new year bash or a trip. The argument all these years has always remained the same, one last trip as the year ends or the last party of the year before we celebrate the year end. As much as I pretend to be burdened by these ideas they are actually the things I look forward to the most and not the new years party. A sort of anti climax, one can say, to all the party trends that mark the end of the year.
This year was a bit different though. I was in a different place, being trapped between life decisions that range from one end of the world to another, covering ever inch of the spectrum, be it visible or infra red or ultra violet. I wanted to get away from the violence in my head.

The usual ways were tried. Cheap booze in an expensive party, a DJ that wouldn't stay on the whole event and a hangover that added to the morbid mess that marked my December. Friends came over. Over booze, food and really sleazy jokes dreams were shared and hopes shattered. It was building up brilliantly. From places to go to designing your own planet. A painting you could deface to monuments you wish were pubs. A brilliant thought process it is of an alcohol addled mind.
The whole debauchery ended with me waking up and with two friends driving up to daman near the gujarat coast, with two other compatriots seeking an excuse away from the mundane life back home seperately on their way. How it led to daman I don't remember, I doubt any of us do. A cold december night and the warmth of rum can do that to you.

It had been a long time since I did something like this. Like the words of a song at the tip of the tongue this trip had been stuck the whole year round at the back of a laundry list of things to do and excuses to cover them up later. Yet eventually ,if not finally, it broke free like the song it was meant to be.

Daman, for those who do not know, is not Goa. You wont have shacks selling commercial music and games and what not, along with cheap booze and companionship of visitors from abroad. There werent any events to go to. No parties to attend. No planned dancing. Nor the occassional acid trip. Daman is the solitude found in the middle of a crowd. No hip and happening beaches. No churches you 'have' to check out. No film scenes to be replicated and mocked up into a digitally enhanced photograph.

Daman was naked....all its glory simple and for all to see.....

The drinking being over powered by the need to eat bullet chicken and prawn koliwada, followed by the walk to the beach for pan and that Edge Of The World Peg as you watch the waves crash upon a non existant shore under your feet with the moon half lit by the sun and half by our own need for a symbolic night. That marked the first night at Daman.

The morning brought woes of its own with the sun burning us and pushing us further to explore our own little nook of freedom. A secluded beach in a village in this small town,  hardly explored, hardly trampled. The people were old veterans of the land. Taking joy in the familiarity that the place brought to them and the sense of escaping a nightmare of monotony. They were our companions, each enjoying the silence of the other.

As we soaked the sun and the cheap alcohol on a sun kissed beach where none but us sat, crowned in our silence marking the peace that the solitude of this place had brought upon us, we read a little, danced a little, slept a while, played ball, tried to pet a camel, rescued a camel, broke a car, made a friend and watched the sun set on a holiday from our lives that we have yet to recover from.

The drive back was short and fun though I doubt we ever left....