New Freckles

Sweetest Mary Anne
With a face like a pan
Loved and loved dearly too
One whom we know as Tan

But sad Mary Anne
Fought like a man
To forget her love
When loved another, our Tan

And today Mary Anne
Girlfriend and much loved by a Ivan
Hears of her old love
A heart-broken and shatterred Tan

Anxious Mary Anne
Cannot help her mind or her hand
As she sends to Tan an email
Consoling, exciting all at one

Self-stabbed Mary Anne
Sat on the lap of another man
Hoping for a reply someday
From her old flame Tan

Yayy! A mail from Tan!

Tan says : I'm sitting here in a boring room, it's just another rainy Sunday afternoon. I'm wasting my time, I got nothing to do. I'm hanging around, I'm waiting for you, but nothing ever happens - and I wonder.
I'm driving around in my car, I'm driving too fast, I'm driving too far. I'd like to change my point of view. I feel so lonely, I'm waiting for you, but nothing ever happens - and I wonder.
I wonder how, I wonder why yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky and all that I can see is just a yellow lemon tree. I'm turning my head up and down I'm turning, turning, turning, turning, turning around.And all that I can see is just another lemon tree.
Sing: dah...
I'm sitting here, I miss the power, I'd like to go out, taking a shower, but there's a heavy cloud inside my head. I feel so tired, put myself into bed, where nothing ever happens - and I wonder.
Isolation - is not the good for me. Isolation - I don't want to sit on a lemon tree. I'm steppin' around in a desert of joy. Baby anyhow I'll get another toy and everything will happen - and you'll wonder.
I wonder how, I wonder why yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky and all that I can see is just another lemon tree. I'm turning my head up and down I'm turning, turning, turning, turning, turning around and all that I can see is just a yellow lemon tree.
And I wonder, wonderI wonder how, I wonder why yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky and all that I can see and all that I can see and all that I can see is just a yellow lemon tree.

Yippee! I must reply... but what shall I say?

To my faithful friend

What the hell, I say, if u think I am kicking up too big a fuss for being this heart-broken then just leave me alone... am not particularly forcing you to come visit me everyday and pity me and indulge me, just so that I dont go mad enough to commit suicide. If u think thats the worst thing that can happen to me, well, you are so damn wrong. I wont, I assure you I wont, 'cause I simply dont have the guts. If you think indulging me and providing me with nagging company every evening is going to rid me of this 'addiction' as you yourself put it, then you are so damn wrong again. No, nothing's gonna heal me now, not for the time being, if you must know, I am loving sinking in my past and chewing on my memories. If you think a silly trek or a dance class or a trip to the beach is going to provide me that logical relief and distraction, then you are wrong again, 'cause I have no plans of being logical about myself right now. Am going about my necessary activities like a normal person and be thankful to God for that. And lastly, if you think am being extremely harsh on you with this, especially since you are trying to be so nice to me, then am just sorry, am just not in the frame of mind where I can appreciate niceties.

I love Tan still and it kills me that I cannot be there taking care of him today and everyday. What do I want from you, you ask? No sweetie, nothing, just dont worry so much for me or come up with plans to pull me out of this. Am ok. I am a little self obsessed but we all are!

You will come again to visit me this evening, wont you?

Some therapy!

Ok! So am becoming totally whacko and have lost all self-control, so dont expect me to ever be normal again. Do you think I'll ever regret? Am switching on this flag in my brain so that if I ever do regain my senses, (am hopeful, huh!) or come back to normal or regain a certain self-control, am excused for this phase in life. I deserve this, positively!
So last night, Sri and Niki and me went out to that new place, TReePub, heard of it? Its by the mainstream almost central to the jungle, and went on this major binge, I drank till I was water! I had no feelings left and was numb throughout. I felt no head and no heart and I loved that bit! The head came back with a full force this morning but I kinda loved the pain. Heck, am crazy I suppose.
TReePub is good and cheap, maybe merely promotional but it was good therapy for me. Am not gonna tell you all abt this place but will just end with a distant image I had in my mind before I fell asleep, can't make head or tail out of it right now, so I'll just write it down for ya...
There was a boat, a sailboat, yatch types, sailing in the middle of lots of water, sailing calm and placid, you get the picture? Then out of nowhere there was this motorboat kind of thing, actually I've never seen a thing like that in real life, so can't really give an eg.. It disturbed the smoothness of that yatch and shook its sails and made it all bouncy and then just as it was about to leave the frame I was seeing, a thin sword like thing jut out and slashed holes into the sails. It was weird, I know, what you're thinking, but I really did see it and am not making it up one bit, you know. Thats it, after that I passed out I think.

Dream on

Last night I had a dream, it was definitely not one of my crazy ones, infact I doubt even the most dreamless person would call it crazy, but then I have to write down my dream.
Tan and me had had one of our fights I suppose, because the mood had a weird tension, the atmosphere felt tight types, sometimes you can really make out these kinda things even in dreams, hasn't it happened to you in your dreams? I mean, you start dreaming and then isntantly sense the mood of the characters involved, if u still insist things like that dont happen, then you must concentrate hard the next time you dream. One can really make out these things. So as I was saying, Tan and me were grumpy and snorty, and full of smart-ass replies to each other. That last bit wasn't an exception with Tan, I mean, his regular self was full of those slappy replies all the time, you could say the quick-witted kinds! But my wit largely swung with respect to my moods. As in happy me was the same as dumb me and he or anyone else could pull my legs non-stop and I wouldn't mind a wee bit. If I was sad or frustrated or disappointed, I was still dumb, but here I might mind you pulling my legs. And lastly if I was angry, or to be specific, if I'd just fought with Tan, my wit would be like razor sharp and my replies might just slice you into pieces in a second! Okay, am exaggerating a bit!
Anyways, so in that dream our conversation was the usual post-fight one.
'Don't you think you are behaving like crap over something as trivial as a book?'
'I never claimed I am the most well-behaved one around and besides, dont make the mistake of referring to it as a trivial book.'
'Look, reading abt how some very insignifcant guy and girl spent half their lives is hardly what I call interesting.'
'How'd you know what's interesting? You think non-fiction history of india part II is exciting'
'Well, what can I say it is,...'
Then I, like a third person in my dream, remembered that the fight was about some non-complimentary thing he said about a book written by a cousin of mine. God knows why, but am crazily protective about folks I like and noone can say anything negatively judgemental about them. Like for eg. I developed this huge mind block for Tanu ever since she said something like Tan had bad skin and that he ought to do something about his pimples. It was pretty harmless of her to say that and she meant tons of good maybe, but I kind of freaked out on that. Not that I said anything to her ever, but I never kind of relaxed with her ever after that. Even now we meet, and I dont as such remember it all the time, but sometimes it does crop up in my mind!
So the dream was clearly everything that happened that evening and the making up and the philosophical conversation that we generally flowed into after that. Off course, it was Tan who pulled out of it the first time it struck him he wasn't doing anything factual! So thats my dream and my day today seems to be made simply because I dreamt of one silly evening from my past. A dream that really took place...

Whats he doing?

What do you think he is doing?
Waking up each morning,
bright and well-slept,
brushing his teeth and a certain gnawing feeling,
gobbling quickly his 2 slices of bread, a banana
and coffee with a blank in a corner of his brain,
rushing to work and maybe.. out of that pain,
working out all those reports and data
and charts and a crazy heart beat,
making all those various phone calls and sometimes
wondering why he can't make that old one,
treading slowly back to home,
to his lonely higtmare of a home,
picking up a book on the way,
thankful, they were not ending too,
reading a cheerful line from a neighbours book
in the subway and smiling faintly hoping,
things will fall back to smooth pattern again
in his derailed life,
thinking books were meant to be read and consumed
and relationships were meant to be lived and enjoyed,
and that neither of them lasted forever,
day dreaming to music for the first time in his life and
pulling out of the trance quickly,
back to preparations for quizes and
lists of places to be travelled to,
Yes, he thought, life was to be lived,
sometimes in memory and sometimes in present.

My first kiss

Suzy says if you've never talked abt it till today, why talk abt it when its dead? That 'dead' came like a hard punch on my face, she might have as well hit me, slapped me, punched me hard, why that!? I got so stuck on that dead that I stopped listening, speaking, responding, reacting to anything at all after that for a long long time, not even when Suzy left, crying, not even when I ate my dinner, not for a long time until I sat down to write again...
So the whole world thinks that its dead, why can't I just be a part of this world with respect to this dead thing, arrgh, or why can't I just go back to being live again. Yes, I wanted Tan, missed him badly today, right now, Why the hell can't he come back, just maybe one more time? And then... I cried loudly for a while, then I got all mad, dialled his number, got a 'number unreachable' response, cried softly, until I felt all empty. Heck, am getting desperate, mad and awful and the worst part is that I've totally lost my control, totally. Help!!! Should I call Suzy? No, Y not? she might be sleeping, oh! she wouldn't mind. Maybe I should simply cry and die alone...
But before I do that, I must just tell you about that one time Tan and me kissed. It was so sweet you know... He was like a frightened pup, oh that look that used to make a jelly out of my heart! So I held him tight for a long time after that, it almost seemed to stretch out to eternity, an eternity in which I dreamt a million dreams, of setting up our home, putting all his tons of books and CDs on a big brown book shelf, yeah i even imagined it to that great a detail, then how I'd have two more pups, frightened and coming to me to be held tight, and how I'd cook omelette and khichdi for us all, and how I'd... until Tan shook the silence with some stupid measurement of my heart rate! Trust him to bring us back to earth softly with silly measurements and facts and crap trivia, he always did it on our escapes to deeply intimate moments!!! Shit, if only I can tell you how badly I hurt right now, even as i write this, remembering that one tiny moment of immense joy and bliss...
I smile as I recall for a fleeting moment that Tan used to say love is over-rated and yet he would have to tell every sentence he spoke to just abt anyone and he would have to seek me out every day and he would have to be wished and prayed for by me and he would have to write about me! Heck, he might be the only one who ever wrote about me! And then I dont know what came over me, I breathed hard and fast for a few moments and quite unthinkingly went and punched my hand hard, real hard on the wall. It hurt so bad and I was so mad, heck am out of help's reach I guess!

Beginning

[Scream] There is too much in my head, if I dont write it and let it go, am gonna burst with all of it one of these days! So here goes, the very beginning of it all.
The second series of tests for the semester was over and assignments were submitted and nothing much remained to be done for that evening, or for that weekend or for that next whole week of holidays. I decided to go to the library and borrow a bunch of books to read up than feel hollow and pathetic and dwell in self pity all over again.
All my friends, yeah most of them except the trekking ones, had boyfriends, which in turn meant a social life in college! The trekking ones just trekked up vague routes in groups, got to nowhere, smoked, saw the angels and demons dancing by, and returned in good time. Rima, Tanu and me went along with them that one time, saw the ghosts and returned to never go again. I didn't even think it was worth it if I was going to be the most lonely girl around. Trekking and smoking never made me go all 'whee whee...'. Rima had been dying to be done with her tests, the assignments never bothered her, and get into her relationship all over again. She was this studious kinds, who took hiatus(right spelling?) from her relationships when the tests were round the corner and promised to be back as soon as they were over. She was wonderful at it. Sometimes her dedication to whatever she did in life was so awesome that I almost envied her, in comparison, I seemed to suck at my academics and have 0 contribution to any relationship! So that evening Rima was getting all dressed to go on a back-after-break date. Tanu was amazingly accomodating, she accomodated academics, relationships, trekking, politics, part-time jobs and friends with smooth time distribution! She was doing decently well in all the sectors and the best part about her was she always understood me! That evening she had a campaign meeting for the college elections for next year. So books were all I was left with. As I walked to the library, I passed a lonely looking guy, sitting along the parapet and working out something on some paper. For a moment I wished I was like, like Tanu, who could speak to just about anybody, with an confidence that she will be heard and responded to. I could have then spoken to this lonely guy, or maybe I still wouldn't, didn't I see him busying himself? Did I want a boyfriend this evening? No, I told myself, I wanted no company, I need no company and its absolutely fine to sit alone in your room and wait for a call from home.
So thats how it was until, Tan, I didn't know his name then off course, came up from behind and said 'Hi!'. I swung around in surprise, thinking it might be that lonely guy, but it turned out to be that pimply guy who was always answering in statistics-II class. Long back, when I was dreaming in class, I thought this pimply guy would be one of those foolhardy types, capable of jumping into the pool at the deep end without knowing anything of swimming!
'You doing statistic-II this sem aren't you?'
'Yeah, .. yeah I've seen u too!'
'So, how was the paper today?'
[Arrgh! I hate discussing the paper after the test, I'd much rather die not knowing what killed me!] I thought, why can't this pimply guy go hang himself somewhere, than by my neck... I almost laughed imagining the last bit, this must have made me smile, 'cause he said...
'Did damn well, eh?'
'No, I mean, don't feel like discussing paper now,... I hate knowing where I went wrong'
'Oh, but I was hoping at least one person would tell me the answer to this question is 1, I've asked many others, but mostly people haven't answered that one..........................'
[I had stuck my index fingers into my ears at some point during this, he continued despite that! Weirdo...]
'Anyways, you going to canteen?'
How did I manage to hear that bit alone? and before I thought or realised what was happening, I was speaking, 'Yeah, I mean no, I was going to the library, but I'll come along with you to canteen if you dont discuss paper anymore!'
My silly ears went red before I even completed that foolish stunt, how on earth did I calculate that he wanted me to come along?, how on earth can I show off my desperation like this?, how on earth can I embarass him and myself this well?, and most importantly, damn my ears!
'Ok cool, but if I meet anyone from stats class am going to ask about this question, ok?'
'[ok u moron, u and your silly stats questions] ok whatever...' I had recovered from my deep red ears, finally! As we dragged along to canteen, we introduced ourselves and I came to know him a little more than merely the foolhardy, pimply, answering guy from stats class to Tan. Apparently he thought my name was Rima, I pointed out the right name and well, that's almost the beginning to Gina and Tan!