Everyone has a story. The starting and the ending might be the same, but the part in between, the part which is unique – it is the part that matters.
We all make stories, we build them as we grow up, thinking someday we might get to live them. That some fine evening, we will enter the castle doors and find everything just the way we have dreamt it to be, just how we have always imagined that it will be.

Isn’t it interesting, that we keep changing the subjects of the story, or have the story with multiple subjects – we are the protagonists in some, in some we would just wish to lie back and enjoy the essence of it all? Isn’t it fascinating, that while some stories fade out from the memory as soon as they are over, others last for a long time, leaving at their own pace, affecting, in their own way, all the stories which might spawn later?

I too, have a set of stories. Stories which revolve around a Chemical X – there are many names for it, but the superset of, I call that love. As our stories grow the form of love changes – it is obsessive in the first chapter and as the effect recedes, it grows out to be the adhesive which ties the bonds. It is desire in some, lust in others; platonic in some, consuming in others. All stories have one form of love, and the most interesting ones are the ones in which it is conspicuous by its absence.

You asked me if I could give you a love story. No, I cannot. I am still to understand love, be immersed in love, find the meaning of love. What I can give you is a story of a boy who thinks he cannot fall in love. Because all his attempts have cumulated in ‘mere’ stories. All his stories are chapters in the big book of life. I can give you the chapter of hope, the chapter, he has so fondly titled as “a breath of fresh air”.

Let me tell you about the boy: The boy was young. He considered himself as face with no features, but hidden tears and stolen smiles- well versed in the art of getting by. He was floating in a sea of answers with no obvious question. He knew the ways to go around a problem, arrive at the conclusion, but taking the final step, getting beyond the solution seemed jinxed. And he was mad. He was angry for so long he couldn’t remember when he was not. He wanted to vent it out, he believed he could. And he wished he did, for the fire within consumed the self, part by part, time by time. Looking for a savior, he was tired. He had to evolve, the self he had preserved for so long had to grow, the barriers needed to be broken, and distance remained to be traveled. Life as he knew it had to come to an end.

In his fruitless quest to find his enlightenment, our boy wanders to many-a-places. He tries to learn from every experience and places his old in front of the present. That for him defined what future might shape out to be. In one of the escapades with reality, a stroke of mad genius luck as he calls it- he meets the girl. She is everything that he could have ever wanted from life. She can read his thoughts before they can make sense to him, she can take the burrows of sadness that have made a home on his forehead and replace them with nerves of equanimity- all with just a hint of a smile. I think we all need an element of calmness in our lives, and she was that for him- and much more.

He falls in love. He never wanted to, he never tried, but he did. He did fall in love. The hollows in his heart aligned conspicuously and he could understand the rhythm of its beats. He could build his fortress around the imaginary castle of peace and nothing would pierce him anymore. And it broke his heart every time when he realized he could never have her. There could be a million reasons for that, but he feared to find out why. She had brought with her a magic wand when she had entered in his life, and he could not envisage his self without the wand hovering over his head, shielding him from the dark side.

What he slowly learns is to be happy with what he gets, even if, in the eyes of the crowd- the society he so religiously hates- he gets nothing. The time he meets her, he is the happiest. That time, no one can take away from. He is elated when she finds her way out of the jostling crowd, just to meet him. He likes it how her eyebrows shrink when she is in deep, pondering on something. He likes the way she dresses, the way she is different from everyone else there is.

And when he is down, and she comes along like a ray of hope, holds his hand to guide him the way and her eyes are fixated at trying to figure him out and he knows that she wants to cure him. She likes him but it just cannot happen. He might not be the same to her as she is to him. But there is a sense of peace about that. There is a warm cold breeze which blows when the two meet. They embrace, whisper inaudible words in others’ ears – till the next time, they say.

He is content with this. For this story doesn’t have an end. The chapters in between are etched with a smile. And that, to him, is more than love has ever tried to deliver.

The color of the battlefield was sketched in different shades of red and black. One could have looked it from the stains of a broken glass and it would present itself to him or her as a Goya masterpiece. Who could have thought there was a necessity of a painter of battles in a time of peace? Who could have thought the nation would still be sacrificing its bravest sons to a feud which it hasn’t been able to resolve for seventy long years?
“Fuck you all. If I go down, I will be taking twenty of the pigs who attack us, from the front, with me.” Oh the exuberance of the youth! Aamir had proclaimed this to his unit in that desi bar where they always used to go and drink. “Look how steady this hand is when it is holding on to a gun. I will kill half a dozen before they come to know just what hit them.” Today, as he lay dying from the wounds of the battle, he could not help but smirk on the realization that he was true to his word.

Mother, I have always loved you.
Father, please don’t be surprised, I have loved you too.
Sister, you have been the cherry of my life.
I had no idea that I was going to leave you behind.
Cherish from the fact that the victory is as yours as it is mine,
And I hope you are proud,
There wasn’t one who could cross the line.

The letter from his parents was in his pocket and he took it and carefully he lay by his side. The crumbled paper looked as peaceful as the white it wore; the lashes of ink sprayed on it reminded him of the clear blue sky which welcomed him whenever he was home. The frailty of the thin papyrus echoed with the growing weakness of his breath. He looked at it and wondered if he could have done anything different at the places he didn’t know at the moment but had already visited for the last time. A gush of wind passed through and he shivered with the cold and it took him to when he was home.

“Aamir! You better finish off all what’s in your plate before you go off.” Aamir’s mother implored him to eat and he couldn’t help but suppress a smile. Years had passed by but he found solace in the knowledge that some things would never change. And how he loved the mango chutney which his mom prepared come summers! The aroma of the fresh picked fruit, the taste of the amalgam of mirchi, dhaniya, pudina and whatnot, the aftertaste of the love with which it had been prepared – he loved it all. He licked his fingers after every bite he took and said, “Amma, this food has the power to bring me back from the grave! How can you even think that I would go off with my friends leaving it behind?” He might have meant it as a joke but picking up the topic of one’s supposed death in front of his or her mother can seldom be considered as a good idea. Aamir could not fail to notice the sudden change in his mother’s face and the drop of tear which she quickly tried to hide. “Oh I am so sorry, amma. This was meant as a joke. I am sorry for being a little crude, the army has hardened me a little bit, you know. You know your son, right? You know that I will come back to you from wherever I go. I love you, and I love the smell of this house, I love the warmth with which the city greets me whenever I am here. And you know how I enjoy having food and tell me this- if not for anything- how can I not come back to eat the food that you prepare for me, always.”
“Who taught you to talk like this, son?” She asked him with a smile. She knew her son; he would do anything to keep her happy. But what about the fear of the mother whose son is leaving for the battlefield? She was one part happy and five parts sad, and every single night she cried a silent lament. Every morning she had prayed for his safety, every afternoon she wished that he would never leave. “Oh the birds taught me that” he said as he looked at the sky. It was blue, the color of his mother’s eyes.

Friendships made, memories written,
For sounds of laughter, these haunted valleys beacon.
The mountains call you on the pretext of freedom,
Amidst all the gunfire, you ask questioning the heavens.

A sharp cough to the right where he was lying brought him back to reality. The red in his commander’s eyes reminded him of the price one pays for the greater good. Aamir had gone half deaf from the sound of explosions and he yelled, “We did it, captain! They failed, yet again.” The general winced from the pain, he could taste the blood in his mouth. “Do you really think so, comrade?” he asked. “Look around you, look at the bodies of your brothers which lie beside these fuckers. What can we call a win if the price to pay for it is inexplicable?” Aamir looked at the man he had admired since the day he had first met him, and he smiled at him. “Don’t worry, Sir. It has all never really been about us, has it?” The general knew his life was ending, seconds at a time, he looked at Aamir and remarked “Then what has it been about? Farts and rainbows? Hahahaha.. haha..ha”
Aamir looked at him in amazement. How could someone find a laugh when everything around him was black, dark as the starless night? He struggled to reach out to his captain, hold him for one last time. He still remembered, to this day, when he had first met him.

“Always be on the lookout for an attack.” The general yelled in that husky voice you associate with the Army officers. “The coward the enemy is, it will try to surprise you. The check-posts catch hold of almost every insurgent that tries to break in. Your job is to ensure you deal with the ones who escape. The ones who, God-forbid, might catch us with our pants down.” A junior sniggered at the latest comment. It was routine, for the old timers, to listen to the general and go off for a smoke, with the discussion being which curious innuendo thrown by the general’s mouth was the flavor of the day. The whole camp tried to keep a straight face, they knew what was coming. “The fuck you sniggering at, rat-face?” The general bellowed. “Haven’t you been ever caught pants down, pretty boy? Go, go outside and pull your pants down. Sit as you would if you have to take a shit. But you will have something coming if I see a single shit stain on the ground”, said the general. “Report back to me in two hours. You will have another thing coming if I find you otherwise. Ask anyone, I always know”

The general called Aamir to his room after Aamir was done with the punishment. “I hope you have learned your lesson”, exclaimed the general. “I couldn’t help but notice”, the general continued, “that you kept grinning from time to time during your punishment. Why was that?”
“Oh that !” Said Aamir, “if you were sitting where I was sitting, you would see a rainbow down the road far-far away.” “now”, he continued, “if you trace the origin of the rainbow, it felt it started across the same lines where I was. A rainbow feels like it starts from the ground, and the closest to the ground was my butt. It felt as if I was farting rainbows. It was hilarious, sire.”
“Hahahahahahahahahahaha!” The general burst into a laughter. “come with me”, he said, “we’ll have a drink”

The pain in his groins kept increasing by the minute. He closed his eyes to suppress the tears, he started to pray for his fears to subside. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see only the love of his life and what could he not have given to teleport to wherever she was. He could see her face in the darkness, and he prayed to it to give him warmth. He remembered a quote he had read somewhere, “find what you love, and let it kill you.” He wondered between two two- Nausheen and his country, who did he want to provide the privilege to. He closed his eyes and thought of the last time they were together.

She can cure him, can’t she
Every second he lives a little, every other he dies,
And she has, with her, a magic wand,
He wishes,
She swings it by.

He could imagine her standing in the sand,
For she carries a magic wand in her hand.
And god he wishes,
If only,
For once,
She could swing it by.

“Don’t tell me you are leaving!”, yelled Nausheen, “you just got here a month back. We haven’t even started on whatever we planned to do when you would come… when you would stay. With me, be mine. Mine to hold, mine to caress.” She was almost on the verge of tears. “This is not fair to me- what do I hold on to when you are not around? What do I pin my hopes on when I know you are going to the border? How do I bring myself to taste anything when it is your lips I crave? How do I go anywhere without you holding my hand? Tell me what do I do when I cannot breathe without your breath on my neck? You are leaving and you are taking a part of me along with you. Tell me, why do I have to compromise on what’s mine to own?”
Aamir looked at her and her flushed puffed up cheeks. Her eyes were bloodshot red and it killed him. She looked like the angel that he had always worshipped and now that when he was leaving, it seemed he was going forward but everything he ever laid his heart on was being left behind. He loved her more than she would ever know, and she loved him more than she could ever show. He had realized this, and had played this discussion over and over in his head the day he knew he was going to be assigned his posting.

He knew that she was going to understand in a little while. She always did. And it killed him even more. He could look at her all day and admire the perfection that she always said belonged to him. “Come here”, she said. “Hold me. Hold me for a while and do not let go. Run your fingers through my hair as you always do.” The tears had left their stains on her cheeks, and the mascara that adorned her eyelashes so royally had smeared itself all over. Her eyes dried off in a little while, as she thought did her dreams. Her voice, it croaked and she whispered to him. “Kiss me. Be with me..in me.. till you leave.”

What would I not give?
To have you all in my arms again.
Be with you, love you,
Breathe with you every breath.

Aamir looked at the sky and could see the faint beams of sunlight getting through the emptiness of clouds. The rays gave him hope that world might still have a chance, it reminded him of the sacrifices which his brothers and he made to keep whom he loved safe. He could find his peace from the warmth of his memories. He had lived a good life, been a good son, a good lover, and a great soldier. He was proud. He was proud till his last breath left him.

He was on with his daily charade. Sitting in the park; a lighter in his hands. A click, he could see the flames. Another click and the lid went down to extinguish it all. With each click and a flame, he could see the past. With each movement from the hinges, the lid came down on his present. He wondered if he could change the mechanism to switch between the two. Make the burning flame his shining ray of the present. Bring a lid down to the flame which has already been taking the shape of something past.

The past held him. It was viscous, it was venom. He had learnt all he cared for from it, he wanted to let it go. He wished knowing that his past wasn’t his to own; it was the past of the whole world. The flames of the past burnt him a little every time it forced the lid down what could be called as the present. He was tired of getting burnt time and again.

The flame fought gallantly for a moment or two whenever the forces beyond its control forced themselves on it. The present had hopes from the past, and the past hoped to click with the present to shape future. Whenever he tried to make it happen, it burnt him some more.
Little children were always amused by his innocuous acts. They came to the park to play and there they could see him, trying fervently to tilt the balance between the two. The innocent creatures children are, never could they understand what he was trying to accomplish though. For all they knew, neither did he.

He could have been content with the fleeting present, and be glad he could survive the flames of the past. He could have been resigned to the fact that there was little he could have done to get the time he had now linger a little bit longer. He could have been and done a lot of things but could have they changed anything?

For there he sat, silently weathering his current in the shade. The breeze whispered her kiss to his cheek and had his lips contoured in the shape of a grin. He looked at the lighter to hear it click. The flame looked back at him and smiled.

Image courtesy http://metalifestream.com/wordpress/?attachment_id=2887

I was never always like this. I used to believe in expressions, morality, co-existence. You know, the usual suspects. Expressions have never helped anyone. Unless you are a clown and you are willing to paint your face with a cheap paint which might someday take your skin with it. And as you find out that morality is not something that you hold inside you but practice and roll it out in the sleeves of your $300 Armani shirt, you sort of leave it to that.

Don’t even get me started on co-existence. It is the pile of bullshit on which other bullshit resides. We have divided the world into narrow blocks, each to function in its own way, with changing dynamics. You put up a farce, prepare yourself, get a job, get a life. Get a nice place to live and fill it with expensive stuff. And one day, you die. Life goes on. Live moves on. You have no history and your mind is well and truly fucked when you start to realize that you always have had no future. Mr. Walters knew all about it when he talked about you being just another brick in the wall. You are me and I am you. Repeat after me , ‘I am a polished fucking product of the society.’

I am a microscopic cube of the matrix.

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain one once we grow up”. Pab-the-fuck-lo Picasso. He tries to say something every interesting, in addition to the blatant obvious, here. He is asking a collective disintegration of the society. ‘Your rules’, ‘your collective sense of vigilance’– where were they five years ago? What will they be five years from now? You are being brought up to serve the bigger good, the people who sit high up in the corporate ladder, smiling at you- imploring you to go on- to join the race to maybe one fucking fine day, you’ll be at their position. Yappie-fucka-doo.

You burn out thinking what in your life can be different? What can change the basis of which your life revolves. Can you be two persons at once? Can you carve out something out of nothing? Can you create something so beautiful that you can surrender yourself to it, trust what it says and you can achieve whatever you set out to be. And I am not talking of your clichéd-self-help-book-dream of becoming something. Roam out in the wild, go to mountains, explore the seas. Get a night of drunken debauchery with girl you always wanted. You know, the usual shit. Now don’t pull up your nose saying that there’s always a girl. Well, of course there is! You waste an exorbitant amount of time and energy in finding fuck, and when you find one, you are obsessed in not fucking up. When you are not successful, you go to the place where it all began seeking closure. Sometimes it finds you, sometimes you move on and, sometimes, you lose the way. We all lose do this at least once.

I am an inflamed sense of rejection.

With every happiness you feel in your life, deep down, you have this tinge portion of melancholiness. You fear of its longevity. You feel happy when you reach your home and it’s still there, you look for your partner when you wake up and are glad when he or she is still there. You know there’s a disaster that’s waiting to happen. You are glad when you find it hasn’t struck it. You don’t live for the day in hope for the future and you die every day, by the hour.

But you cannot change the world, can you? You cannot change the way you look, your face, your body, the handy piece of muscle that dangles in between or the tiny cute depression between your legs. The world knows you by those attributes and places it to the block identified by your name. Can you pick up a different identity when you pick a different name? How can you not feel like a rockstar if you are called Jim fucking Morrison? After a time, if you take attributes from his identity and imbibe it in your own, can you create a different world for yourself?
Your fucking world. Your fucking rules.

I am a shallow face of enlightenment.
I am a calculated farce of disenchantment.

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. Only when we have lost everything that we are free to do anything.” Tylar fucking Durden. To rise from the ashes you need a new code to live. To set free from the shackles the world ties around your neck. You let go of your expressions, it shows you what you really are, you lose the element of deception. You wear a mask. You fuck with the society and the society fucks with you. You wear a face and you take a name.

I picked ‘Daaku’. What’s yours?

Altered Realities I which i wrote two years back: https://daakuspeaks.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/altered-realities/