Lies

'Being with you, I don't realize when I fall asleep, and when I wake up' said he once.

'Liar!' cried she on the empty office terrace, burning with sunlight.

'Liar!' Cried the unmade bed.

'Liar!' cried the voices in her head.

'Liar!' Cried her broken heart.

'Being with you, I don't realize when I fall asleep, and when I wake up' said he once again, kissing her lips.

[The Casper and Michelle series]- Whose are you?

'Tumi Kaar?'

'Aami Tomaar...'

'Tumi Kaar??'

'Aami Tomar.'

[Whose are you? I am yours... Whose are you?? I am yours.]

Casper asked her the question again and again, as if to reassure himself that she was his, and every time she answered 'I am yours' telling him that indeed she was his.

'Come sit on my lap.'

'No.' She shook her head like a kid, with an innocent smile.

'You won't sit?'

'No...'

'You won't come? I will count till three... 1.. 2..'

'Ok ok' and she was there, right on his lap, where he wrapped his arms around her tightly and kissed her on the forehead. For everything he would threaten her with a count of three, and she loved it. It was like a delicious tease. She loved the way her heart fluttered like a butterfly, every time she gave in to him. She loved to hear him say 'I will count till three...'

'You chor' she said, gently admonishing him. [You thief]

'Why am I a chor re?'

'You are...'

'Why are you calling me a chor? Tell.'

'Because you choried my heart'

'I did not steal your heart, you gave it to me. You choried my heart, you chor.'

The howl of a lonely dog somewhere far away, broke her reverie.

'Aami kaar?' She asked herself. [Whose am I?]

She closed her eyes and imagined that somewhere far, far away, a familiar voice was replying... she wished that a familiar voice was replying 'Tumi amaar.' [You are mine].

But the only reply that came back was from her own throat. She kept repeating...

'Aami kaar?'

'Tumi amaar...'

'Aami kaar??'

'Tumi amaar baba, tumi amaar!'...

[The Casper and Michelle series]- On the parapet.

Michelle sat faithless on the parapet wall, looking down below. A few lonely cars drove by fast, breaking the silence of the night. The haze of pain surrounded her head, and the ironic joke of life spun in it like a giant wheel. Loneliness was slowly becoming her friend. She was slowly learning how to live with herself and get marinated in pain.

'Would you come now Casper, if I jumped? Would you catch me if I fell? Would you spread your arms like my guardian angel and save me, or will you stand and watch? I need faith Casper, because my stomach seems to eat away at my heart and my heart seems to eat away at my soul... There is this pain, lying like a stillborn child inside me. An infected foetus that is killing me slowly.'

Why is it so hard for us to accept the judgements that life passes on us? Is it because we too have a say in those judgements? Michelle was a victim of life's cruel joke. She had given her all in love, and now there was nothing left in her empty palms. They seemed so barren and white and dry that she cried for the warmth of Casper's hand in them. She could be anyone for Casper. She could be his Sara, his Melissa, his Michelle... anybody he wanted... and he didn't want her.

In the sedated numbness of her pain, Michelle stood up and started walking on her parapet wall like a cat. 'Will you catch me if I fall? Will you fall with me... Will you fall for me Casper, the way I fell for you? Will you give me a chance to prove that we can be together?' Her legs trembled for a while, and then she stood still. She knew that she would not fall, and Casper would never give her a chance. She would just have to live on day after day, to soak in her hurt and seethe in her eternal dreams of holding his hand. 'I will always be there for you Casper... I will always be there waiting in my swing for you.'

Realizations in the city of Bombay.

The first time I came to Bombay, I didn't like the city. It seemed so distant and mundane. It's small lanes reminded me of Calcutta, an aged city which had seen too much to be exuberant. I guess I was comparing it to home. What I didn't realize is that no place is ever like home. Home has a way of curling you into it's lap and comforting you when you are cold and depressed. You will always find joy in it's otherwise dingy lanes full of everyday people!

On my second visit, I liked Bombay much better. Me and Shan went to the jogger's park. I walked and watched the sea while Shan jogged. The sea breeze with it's old, fishy smell hit my face. As funny as the smell was, being there near the sea seemed to take a load off my heart. It reminded me of my frequent trips to the sea shore of 'Digha' with my family, when I was a kid. I would watch the sea for hours, and it would wash away some silent pain in me. Water always calmed me like nothing else. It always reminded me that there was some stillness left in life.

Life is a little different here, in Bombay city. You see all kinds of people in one place. In the park, there were aunties in dirty pink salwar kameezes, walking in their almost torn, middle class chappals, trying to manage their kids. Then there were the upper class women in their perfectly coiffured hair, Puma shorts, and sports bras, jogging in Nike shoes. Shan jogged alongside one of them (very funnily), in hopes of getting laid later. I don't know how that guy manages to get lucky!!! There were middle aged uncles, with life and years accrued around their waists in the form of 'domestic fat', walking very fast and very diligently, in hopes of renewing their sex lives perhaps!

There were young couples in corners, holding hands and dreaming of love. 'How naive!' I thought, when I saw them. Little did they know what life had in store for them. How it would one day, cruelly, wipe away all their dreams of eternal love. I saw a middle aged couple holding hands and walking, and a solemn smile crossed my face. How brave, I thought! They had battled on and won against life. Won against themselves, and kept their love alive. Their togetherness gave out a gleam of hope in this dreary world of heartbreak.

There was a lonely teenager somewhere, sitting and crying silently. No one seemed to notice him but me. I was instantly worried, but after sometime I realized that I was almost staring at him, while no one else cared... I shied away. I understood that this city had learned to give you what you needed the most- Space! Home cared too much about me. It always pulled me into it's lap to comfort me, and amidst all it's hugs, sometimes there was no space to breathe. Bombay seemed to give it's people that much coveted space. It taught it's inmates how to breathe and heal by themselves. It set the expectation that no one was coming to their rescue.

I looked out at the sea and felt at ease. The sun was setting on the horizon and everybody waked fast and passed me by, but I didn't care. I liked it that I could walk at my own pace and take life as it came. I liked it that I felt no longer like a running puppet who jogged to the rhythm of life. A lot of realizations swept through me and I felt peace blanket me near that busy sea shore. The calmly breaking waves of the sea seemed to tell me somehow that life was not all that bad. That I could still find peace somewhere.

In the quagmire of life, where men, relationships, and your job fuck your mind up every day, and make you hallucinate, you need to find a sanctuary. When broken dreams gang rape your brains, and your oxygen seems scarce, you need to run! Run away! Run far far away to your sanctuary! You may find it in your city or somewhere else, but it's important to go hunting for it... the 'it' named peace! When the unfulfilled promises of love and the complications of human thought confuse you, you need to get away to find your sanity back, because no one can promise anything to you. The only promises that you can trust are the ones that you make to yourself. When you have loved and given your all, but time and life snatch everything away from your hands, you need to take a walk at your own pace to find your sanctity back...

[The Casper and Michelle series]- Dear Casper...

Michelle wakes up. It's evening. She had cried herself to sleep, and now the tear stains still line her cheek. She pulls up her diary and pen, and starts writing to ease the pain.

Dear Casper,

I spent the day looking into my mobile screen, hoping that you will think of me, hoping that you will have something to say to me, but all I saw were stupid service messages that tried to woo some random product into my life. I finally put myself to sleep. Sleep is the only thing that helps, because in my mind, I seem to be able to live out an entire lifetime with you. A lifetime that I deserve, but when I wake up, someone ties a stone to my heart and drowns me in a pool of eternity.

You say it's easy to get over a person... but how do you get over someone who is the drag of your very breath? How do you get over someone who has become the essence of your very life? How do you get over someone whose memories haunt you and keep you alive at the same time? You say that distance will help, you say that time will help... but sometimes time is powerless too. When you know that the balm of time will fail to heal the scars on your brain, all that you can look to is Death, the brother of time, the eternal silencer.

Casper, baby, I feel suffocated. I feel like someone has nailed me alive into a coffin, and buried me deep inside the earth. I tried my best today to forget you. I washed my clothes again and again, but it reminded me of how your smell would still linger on my shirt even when you left. I went to take a bath, but the feel of the water on my skin reminded me of how we used to shower together each time we made love. I came outside so that I could breathe, but when I looked up at the sky, it reminded me of how we stood in the rain in the middle of the road one day, and stuck our tongues out at the sky like little kids, tasting the rain.

Casper, it's not hard to get over you because I love you so much. It's hard to get over you because I don't want to get over you. What you gave me was special, and I will preserve it forever. I wish I could drown us in some far away stagnant lake, and then stop time forever, so that we would be frozen in that moment. We would be frozen in the liquidity of water, you and me, looking at each other eternally. No burden of morals to bear. No people to hurt. No duty to carry out. No sorrow to wield. Just you and me, suspended in a moment forever, and there would be no thing such as forbidden love... How can you forbid love Casper, when it knocks at your heart?

[Writer's Note: I am starting a series of writings on two imaginary characters called 'Casper and Melissa'. Casper and Melissa are made for each other. They share the perfect love, which waddles in imperfection because they cannot be together. The hurt resulting from it is what I am trying to capture in this series].

Making Memories.

He was fast asleep, his arms wrapped around her like she was the very essence of his life. 'It's funny how much more charming a man is, when all his defences are down.'- she thought! 'How vulnerable, yet adorable he becomes when he offers his heart to you on a platter, and then holds you and falls asleep like a baby!' She watched the last candle burn out in it's own melted wax of hot passion. It was still raining outside, and the droplets played a strange, beautiful, haunting rhythm in the dark of the night. It brought back memories... Memories sealed in moments that had passed just a while ago.

The room still reeked of passion. The incense's haze softly whispered the stories of passion in her ear again and again, and she smiled. It was raining when they had kissed that night. The cold water in the air had made them want to bring their bodies together for warmth. The rain that night had brought with it the wild smell of drowsy love. She remembered how it had driven her insane. A lot of things had driven her insane that night. The feel of his hard hands on her skin. His brash lips on her neck, leaving signs of crazy passion- bruises of love. Every time he caught her by the wrist, her body flopped in sweet surrender, and every time his wet lips touched her warm skin, her body arched in rebellion. She was like a puppet in his hands, and he was the master of her will. He was the master of her happiness, her sorrow, her pain, her ecstasy, her tears, her smile... He was the master of her all. It was as if a drop of his breath could make or break her universe!

Their minds were like her incense diffuser that night. Small boxes of slowly boiling love, wafting stealthily into the air and burning out slowly in it's own fire. The music of the raindrops had taken them somewhere else. The wax and wane of their bodies together, the smell of their skin mingling, their heavy sighs and hungry gasps, the ignorant creak of the bed, it all suddenly became one! It was as if intertwined fingers were lost in each other, intertwined souls were exchanged, and both their tears mingled only to bring about an ecstatic burst of euphoria, where ying and yang came together, spinning in a frenzy, becoming grey, becoming love, becoming passion, and a moment turned into an eternity, while an eternity was framed into a moment.

They showered together later, and fell asleep in each other's arms. She knew that when he left the next morning she would lie in bed for hours smelling him in the sheets. She would relive the last night in her head a million times over, and shed a tear or two of bitter-sweet joy without telling him about it. She looked at him now, sleeping like a child, and kissed him gently on the lips. Then she looked away towards her hazy curtains and heard the music of the rains making memories sealed in moments that were sealed in other moments, and a tear fell from her eye.

[Disclaimer: For all those who know me at a personal level, this is not a snippet of my personal life. This is a pure work of fiction. It was born in fiction and will die in fiction, so don't let your imaginations run wild ;)]

Post Coital Cuddles- A man's Perspective.

I am sitting in front of my open laptop now, smoking a cig, pondering on the one question that all women want to scream out universally- Why the hell can't men cuddle after sex??? (To my other fervent male readers- when I say men I am not trying to generalize, I know there are some of you rare gems out there who like to cuddle, so if you fall in that category, you can exclude yourself from this list and stop biting my ass!).

Coming back to the point, just the other day I was talking to one of my friends, and I was trying to get a man's perspective on this topic. Me and my girl friends talk about this all the time. We have known men who do various things right after sex- showering, smoking, playing on the psp, watching the news, calling up others, and even things as ridiculous as hitting the fridge right away to have diet coke and chocolates- but cuddling barely touches the list! In fact, some of us are so disillusioned that we don't even expect cuddles, hugs or even hand-holding any more! I mean, goddamnit! Just lie next to us, even that will do. Just lie next to us for the next 2 minutes and breathe, even that will make us feel like less of a used commodity and more human.

So I asked this friend, 'Why the hell don't guys like to cuddle right after sex? A woman has an emotional hollow in her right after doing it, she feels the constant need to be held, hugged, or told how beautiful she is. Don't guys understand this? Why do they just get up and take a smoke, or clean up and fall asleep?' He replied, 'We expect you to know that you are beautiful, there are some things that we expect you to know without being told. A guy takes the post coital phase in a very matter of fact way.' I must have misunderstood him, because I asked, 'Would a man prefer it then, if a woman just matter of factly got up after sex, had a smoke, took a shower and fell asleep without any expectations whatsoever?' He replied with candour, 'Well yes, it would make our part easier really,' and then he went on to explain his statement...

'You see when a woman has an orgasm, she has the energy for more, while for a man it saps out all his energy. The first few times a man willingly cuddles after sex, but soon it starts looking like a task. Most of us just don't have the energy to cuddle or do anything similar right away, and we don't want to do it like a duty because then the essence of love fades away from it. We will end up doing it then, without any feeling whatsoever. That's why we try to smoke, or do something entirely different from what we just did, to divert our minds, so that we can take the edge off. Once our minds are diverted it helps us relax faster, and come back by your side faster.'

This seemed like a whole new perspective to me! I had never seen it from this point of view. Most of the times we are so busy feeding our emotional need right after sex, that we never think that the guy is well exhausted and almost dead. Hell! I didn't even know we take so much out of a guy right after the big O!!! I think men and women should talk about such stuff more often, because had I known this point of view earlier, I would have kept an array of assorted ciggies, eiderdown pillows and energy drinks right next to the bedside table! Even we can be considerate for you guys!