Unusually imperfectly Complete

The memory of that night refused to evade my senses. It was almost like I was living it, now, every moment of my day. I woke up with vivid sensations of that day's insanity. Some other days, I try blocking out the images that keep resurfacing, try blurring them out. But things don't always work the way we might want them to. Life keeps whining, successfully.

The house was spewing chaos. The laughter, the shrieks, the dances, the singing, the chattering. Everything, but silence. The party, on in full swing. Celebrating my having turned 20, or something like that. As much as I wouldn't have wanted to be here, I was trying to defy my own weak self. Which lay cringed in its loneliness, refusing to shut the tears. A person of few words, I am not, but this weak self, had reduced me to a pitiable state wherein I could say nothing at all. These are things that a broken heart does to you. Shutters your basic self-esteem. Hampers your vital thinking process. Gosh, seemingly, I have been watching a lot of movies these days. Staying at the party, watching others happy, right now was not my thing. As much as I didn't want to go to him, since it definitely is not meant to be, I had to go to him, tell him how I've always felt about what we had.  As I started to run away, I couldn't help but think, that maybe its the movies that are making me over-react, they definitely have a part to play. The Wuthering heights-s, the Casablanca-s, the West Side Story-s, the Anna Karenina-s. But its not just about them, its about me, and its about him. The broken heart, blah blah. People shouting out my name from behind. I ran, even faster.

Adolescent love..
Child-like, a little crude
full of funny promises..undone.

He was going, in two days, maybe. It was ending, whatever there was. We were determined to end it, the remaining pieces, scattered.
We were like two children, always running away from each other, running back together. We were imperfect, in ever sense of the word. Unusual. Unusually-imperfect. Unusually-imperfectly-complete.
Has anyone ever known a feeling like that? It was not meant to be, whatever there was between us, but what. is about to end, should not be happening either. He should be going, because, us together makes no sense, but him going, is ridiculous too. I kept running, without much of a thought in my head. My feet begged me to stop, begged me to gather some respect, asked me to head back home. I kept running. [R. E. S. P. E. C. T.]
I kept running.
After having been asked to get out of his heart.[ R. E. S. P. E. C. T.-the mind resonated]
After having been told, that I don't mean much. The legs were begging. I didn't stop either.
Finally did, in front of the same house, that I'd been so accustomed to stopping in front of. It was a sullen night, the trees incoherent, as much as the heart, which had many things to mumble, but barely did anything escape.

We are the love makers,
and the break-ers too.

We hold hands, and we run. Barefoot, without a care in the world. Into the world, where everything is right, even us being together. His body was like clay. It changed the way I wanted  it to change. Cold first, warm later. Then so warm, we begin melting. The lips touched, parted again. He sank into the couch with me, and I saw a moment of confusion in his eyes. A moment of indecisiveness ensued. He covered me up with his shawl, kept me warm, kept me covered. And we stared into nothingness,sitting close to each other, only hoping, that the night would come, for us to be where, that day, we so wanted to be. The time might come, when we would resolve the differences and look for reasons to be together. Hope, is a soothing feeling. It soothes the pain of separation. It soothes the pain of all the differences that exist. It soothes the pain of wanting to move forward, yet wanting to run away at the same time.


I sometimes can't figure out whether all that happened, was for the better. We were imperfect, yet it was love, alright. A part of me is glad we're not together, and a part of me is aching for him, still. Conflicting emotions, much?

P.S. The guy and girl, have their fair share of differences. That does not make them any perfect. And also, the guy is leaving in a couple of days, so their relationship is not meant to be. But love is a weak emotion, which makes the girl do something, she did not wish to do, that is bow down, and lay bare her weaknesses. opposite emotions?

Have you ever had such magical moment when you felt such strong emotions? Although the girl doesn't want to go to the guy since they can never have a future together given their contrasting ideas, yet, love wins over her, and she has to go. I am sure you have a story to tell too, share your thought as a comment here or on the Close-Up Facebook page. This post is participating in a contest, please vote for me on Indiblogger by clicking on promote there, if you want me to win! Thanks!

The God Of Small things-a reader's viewpoint.

"Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story."

So intricately woven is this book, that one gets caught in the complexity of human emotions and fears. On one side, where you have young innocent minds arrested between the thoughts of an absent father, always over-bearing elders, a mother who clearly loved them but was caught up in her own complex world, but more so, they were perhaps, silently amused by their own connection. On the other hand, you had a mother, who single-handedly bore the brunt of all her youthful mistakes, took the jibes in her stride, who was charmed by her twins' playfulness, who could barely suppress the emotions in her heart that threatened to transcend the societal distinctions. Arundhati roy, very effectively and poignantly braids a story that surpasses all the barriers created by the public and otherwise. When once done with the last page of the book, you find you mind and heart, alike, lingering back in the deepest recesses of the human mind that the book has to offer. 

In brief, the book transcends back and forth in the past and present and is based in the *hot, brooding* Ayemenem area set in Kerala. It talks of a pair of fraternal twins, Rahel and Estha, who are separated at the age of seven and reunited when they are 31. The book is written from the point of view of the children and tackles the issues of communism, caste and the Keralite christianity, as seen through their eyes. The book, at large, is benignant to the emotions of the twins, as they suffer indifference at the hands of their relatives, owing to their Ammu's (mother) and Baba's (father) separation and also due to their friendly encounters with Velutha, their helper and also an untouchable. The primary theme of the book is love. The love Ammu bears for her twins, though she knows that times are to get difficult and she will have to forgo with one of them. The love that silently brews between Ammu and Velutha, which is clearly forbidden. In the abeyance of the silent nights, the beating hearts often looked for a gateway to be one. Arundhati roy has also mentioned the political realities in India, through satirical snippets. She is also critical of the traditional hypocrisy of Ammu's parents. 

The novel also brings to light the forbidden love that grows between the twins, Rahel and Estha. As twins, they always stood connected in a silent, unassertive way. When they re-unite after years of separation at the age of 31, wherein both have grown up to be silent, pained souls, it is perhaps their silence that speaks for them. In the end, it shows their love culminating into incest, which is forbidden love, alright. 

The beauty of Kerala, plays an important character in the book as well, as Arundhati Roy often draws her childhood memories of the place to create situations. As it shows in these lines..

"May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled by the sun.
The nights are clear, but suffuse with sloth and sullen expectation."

All In all, it was a Booker Prize well deserved.

The french connection.

Allons-y..
à l'autre bout du monde,
ou nous sommes ensmeble.
ou nous somes amoureux.
ou il n' y a pas de la haine.
Ensemble..
toi et moi,
en le bonheur et l'amour.

Translation:
The poet asks her partner to come with her to a fawaway corner of the world, where they could be together without hatred, in peace and happiness.

P.S. What do you guys think about my 1st dose at french poetry? Its pretty lame, I know. But its my 1st time. So, I believe I can be excused.

The departing

They walked, hand in hand, oblivious to the prying eyes. A young couple deeply rooted in love. They believed in a future together. He tried with all his might, tried to secure his life right, everything around that one girl who meant the world to him. She whispered something. He couldn’t fathom what, not like he cared much. He was too lost in her beauty to grasp any sound. He didn’t want to coz all he cared was her insane touch which created ripples in his heart. What a woman!

She wrote in an almost uninhibited way. A woman, so sensitive, so dear, wrote in a motion, much like her own spirit, which often sought pathways for expressing her emotions. He was drawn to everything about her. He took to the pen to feel closer to her. He took to her words, to her feelings, to her ideas as easily as one takes to life. But wait, she was his life, wasn’t she? Serendipity engulfed them day in and out, and their young love blossomed to dizzying heights.



We make mistakes, often incorrigible ones. The society though identifies our position as individuals, is a mean place to live in sometimes. Our tough exteriors are often mistaken to be the ultimate traits of our personality. Our outward show of violence makes us sinister, cruel, and uncivilized. He was a guy in love. He couldn’t have been dreadful, he couldn’t have been cruel. Just an extreme act of violence to avenge the insult didn’t make him threatening or portentous. As much as she would have wanted to stay by his side, the darn society wouldn’t let her.

The wedding bells reverberating, the whole house was in uproar, he could see, from a near distant, the chaos that had engulfed the house. Finally realizing that future is not meant to be forever. Tears streamed down his face, as those were all he had. But, she was still his life.

He longed for her sight, the beauty that had once encompassed his entire universe. He longed for her sound, that one voice which tingled long lost memories in him. He longed for her touch, the one brush of her hand, the one caress of her fingers on his face, the one embrace that filled him with warmth, the one coddle that soothed his entire self, the one kiss that would remain on his lips forever.

Love never dies, the people do get isolated, to faraway distant places, but the love remains. Death is, but, an end to her physical presence, the end to her breath that he had always felt, despite the distance. The love remained. You see, he was a man disdained in love, but he was in love, nonetheless. Death might take people far away from you, but she never belonged to him anyway. This way, he felt closer to her. He was being waited for. And tis, the only way, the two would unite. Someday for the love to be one. 

That love.

All of us figured out at the time Krishna fell in love. It was pretty obvious, and as we lived across the street, we could see things, that her family couldn’t. You see, they were blinded by trust. She’d return with him on his cycle, their arms entwined. The elders told her that Steve ain’t a nice guy. These goras were all hot-blooded, and they were known to get dirty with so many women, you couldn’t count. But Krishna wouldn’t listen to any of us. What more could anyone say?

The air was fuelled by tension. It was the time of partition. Independence didn’t seem so far away. One could have expected exhilaration around, since two hundred years of slavery was about to end. But then the political turmoil was engulfing one and all. I heard it in the radio the other day that Jinnah and the Congress are at loggerheads.  There was curfew all around, and the Hindu- Muslim tension was palpating. Our village was relatively untouched by the riots, given its remote location, but when and where things could go awry, only time could tell. Amidst all this tension, the blossoming love story went relatively unnoticed. How Krishna and Steve would escape to the empty shack by the sea, nobody knew. Their romance grew in the backdrop of the lapping waves. I saw them running there, trying to be as subtle as possible. But I wouldn’t tell. My mother never liked Krishna, but I always liked the girl. She was something, I wish I could be, and if she was in love, so be it. Secretly, I always supported their romantic endeavour, but dare I say that loud.

It was the 20th july, late night, I believe. All of us were retreating to slumber after the reporter gave us the last piece of news on the radio. Suddenly, we heard a commotion across the street.   Krishna’s father was screaming furiously at the top of his voice. All the neighbours had gathered around them, and I couldn’t really understand what was happening.

The next day, mother was busy mumbling to herself.

“ Serves her right. Filthy girl, is this the way to behave. Bringing your family’s honour on the street”.

“What happened, maa?”

“She was caught, in her own house, in her own bedroom, doing what not with that gora fellow. How could she?”

I felt really bad for the two. They seemed to do well together, and I knew Krishna’s father would never let them be together again. All during the day, Krishna’s house presented a gloomy picture. That made me sad.

The next day, I woke up to find an empty house. Maa had gone to Krishna’s house, and I saw her consoling Krishna’s mother, who was wailing. Krishna had eloped with Steve. She wrote saying that that is where her happiness lay. I thought she did right, but I stayed mum.

Our village stayed untouched by the riots. The few ripples that were created by the innocent love could still be seen. True love in the backdrop of the riots was such a pretty thought. I wished the elders would understand. As for me, I still stay mum, often going back to the love that I witnessed, which I’m sure is blossoming somewhere still. 

P.S. the pic is from a movie called Before the rains, starring Nandita Das and Rahul Bose. I'd label it as a must watch.