Two

Two years. Fly. Dust settles. No milestones. Continuous journey…sharp sun, shading trees, cobbled pathways, mud and dry leaves. Zebra crossings, hesitant walking.

Two faces. Poetry, politics. Soft, hard. Sentimentalism, sarcasm. Reason, ridicule. Belief, cynicism. Hope, despair.

Two years ago. This was meant to be a place where I could unburden my thoughts, open my pores, expose my warts, and be taken for what I am.

I did not know you. I still don’t know most. Sometimes I do get curious. Where do you live, what do you do, why do you meet me here? I want to occasionally feel your pain and hear your laughter. I want to get inside your mind and listen to its whispers. I want to be there for you just as you have been there for me.

More than even some of my relatives, it is you who know about my health, my visits to the pathology labs, my falls, my scraped knees, my mistakes, my anger, my melancholy, my moments of ecstasy.

You know me enough that if we were to ever meet it would not be like you are meeting a stranger. You will recognise me for chances are I will have scraped knees or will be angry about something…

There are times when you do not agree with my views, there are times when I talk about such trivial things that you perhaps yawn in the privacy of your rooms or wherever you are that you read me, there are times when you wish I said more…or less!

When I say I have nothing to hide, it means that whatever is here reveals me. If someone thinks I am all that bad, then obviously it is based on what is out in the open. However, there are parts of me that are embedded deep within, waiting to come out and breathe. I do feel the suffocation sometimes and hope I knew what it was.

Is it a pebble that I swallowed or a bitter pill I want to forget about? Or is it something magical that found its way into me and filled me with warmth…what is it?

I have no moorings, no anchor, but this is my tent…mostly it is beautiful, swaying as I hold the bamboo sticks. Sometimes a typhoon does shake the structure, the winds howl and specks of sand find their way in my eyes. I blink and watch as the colourful cloth that was my ceiling lies in a heap on the floor, the bamboos prostrate.

It makes me smile. That is the good thing about tents. They are designed to be overhauled and temporary. What lasts is the feeling we experience as our hands are freed and raised towards the sky, asking for nothing.

Thank you for giving me a bit of yourself.

“Ab jis ke ji mein aaye wohi paaye raushni
Hum ne to dil jalaa ke sar-e-aam rakh diya”

- Qateel Shifai

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Am trying to give myself a new look, but not touching the template. Let us see how this poll thing in the sidebar goes. Will come up with fresh interesting ones of social, political and human interest, and am open to ideas from you if I find takers. The blogger picture has been taken in mid-June, 2006; it isn’t yesterday, okay? And I worked real hard at the "loony" art-work.

Am working on some blog-art…let me see…

Updated at 8.00 pm IST: The watercolours are old. I owe these to J, my friend who is no more. I have already mentioned it I think that we had run out of paper and he cut up his larger paintings and these were done behind his art. He did it before I could stop him and he did it without any sense of nobility. He did it because he was a friend and knew I was one too.

This is the first ever time I am putting them up anywhere. J, wherever you are, I can take the potshots on my chin. And I do remember what you said when I first held the brush in my hand after a long break. You shook your head and smiled, "Your confidence seems to exceed your competence here!"

I am saying it publicly because I did not believe I even had confidence. Had you not ticked me off, I might have been far worse than I am...