A Biased View

Since school days, I have been asked about my favourite hobbies. It always used to be reading, I remember. I used to be engrossed in books, lost in a faraway land, oblivious to the real world around me, hunger, sleep and other such attention-seekers ignored. It was more often than not that my mom would find me sitting in one place, in one attitude for hours at stretch, irritable if disturbed. Books were my drugs and I was badly hooked. To the words, the ideas, the world they painted. I couldn’t get enough.  I'd stay up complete nights, with a torch in hand under my blanket, and solve mysteries with Fatty, Beth and all their friends, or go to school with Darrell, Gwendoline and all of their friends, or visit the Faraway Tree with all it's inhabitants. My birthday gifts were novels and even when not my birthday, most of my purchases were novels. Fiction, non fiction, romance, thriller, mystery- you name it and I’d tried it. Then I came to college and started watc...

Safe in the knowledge, or so it seemed, That things lasted, she happily dreamed, Of the day he'd come back, the day he'd call, Of the day he'd embrace her, and call her his doll, Every birthday of his, she'd make a card, Plaster it on his wall, pristine white paint scarred, Every anniversary of theirs, she'd decorate the house, In the hopes it brought back her long lost spouse. Little did she know, in a village, in a faraway land, Was a prisoner of war, with no right hand, Learning to write with his left, an alphabet a night, For the days brought torture, and his never ending fight, Every birthday of hers, a tree he secretly planted, In the hope that some clean air to her he granted, Every anniversary of theirs, a word more he wrote, In the hope that one day, she'd read all he spoke.

Just one more time, she promises herself, Takes a deep breath and pours it in, I hide myself in the dark shadows, That cover her whole, below the chin. I watch as she slowly loses her senses, Watch as she relinquishes it all, She soon has a smile on her face, As her balance too, takes the fall. Spread eagled as she lies on the floor, Her face and hair messed up so bad, She lets out a small laugh of joy, That says despite it all, she's glad. "I've just found you again, so please don't leave, I again smell that smell I smelt on your sleeve, I can see and feel and touch you again, Oh, and that maddening, excruciating pain, Of you having left, having gone is gone, I feel like my many pieces are again one, I can now see all that I've wanted to see, And we are now what I want us to be, Stay, Oh stay, please say that stay you will, Stay, for I haven't yet had my fill." Hearing her mumble and speak in her dream, I smile, d...

O beautiful stranger, Who are you? Where are you from, And how do you do? You invade my thoughts, Capture my dreams, I can't feel my mind, It's coming at the seams. I feel like I know you, From somewhere before, I've been waiting this long, For your knock on my door. Now that you're here, Sit awhile and stay, Don't leave tonight, Give it another day. Enjoy the sunlight, And the winds that blow, But please let me sleep, Some nights in a row. I don't mind not sleeping, As long as I see you, But when you're out of sight, Stay out of my dreams too. For in those dreams I enter a land, So beautiful and serene, I want to wake up and live, That surreal, outlandish dream. Either give me my dream, Forever to keep, Or give me the power, To forget the dream and sleep.

You walk away slowly, Disappear into the misty snow, The darkness swallows you, I can hardly see you now. I see a hundred thousand things, Instead of the ones I'm supposed to see, I don't know why but all of them, Have some of you and some of me. You swear it isn't the end, You swear it won't change, But I don't know why you only exist, In my diary, on every page. I see you everywhere I go, I see you in the stars, I see you in the water of the pool, I see you in my scars. There is no end to this I see, No end, none at all, Every time I stand I wait for it, That inevitable fall. Every time it all breaks apart, I'll sit and put it back, Because I'll never stop hoping that one day, You'll know you complete all I lack. I hope that we will sit, And talk and laugh and play, And life will suddenly be a blur, Of many a night and day. For a day shall come, When it will all be altered, These will all be milest...

In the way she walks, you can never tell, that she's anything but a modern southern belle, In the way she talks, to her mum and dad, There's nothing at all, not a nuance of sad, In the way she laughs, with her friends at school, There's nothing to suggest anything's troubling her cool, In the way she runs, when she's got nothing to do, There's nothing that says she's aching too, In the way she works, when she's given some, There's a lot of work and a lot of fun, But the way she looks when he passes by, There's a minute difference in how the minutes pass by, She laughs a little longer, smiles a little brighter, Looks more flushed, her mind seems lighter, Her spirit is lifted, her eyes glow, Her speech is faster and her words flow, The way she turns when she hears his name, Has your heart ever felt a flutter? Hers feels the same, The way she looks when she speaks of him, There's little to suggest where her heart has been, The way she smiles w...

They say she’s gone. Then why do I see her, wherever I go? She is in that ‘baithak’ she always sat on. In her table fan, that seems to have given up the will to live, almost like it knows she’s gone. She is in that bedroom she always slept in. She’s in the silence that reigns the house now. She’s in the little flame that is alit beneath her bed. She’s in all the clothes she left behind. She’s in her spectacles and jewellery. She’s in the smell that emanates from her bed and her medicine box. She’s in the books and books she used to read. In the books she wrote in. She’s in the balcony chair she sat in. It has become old. Why did I never feel that she was getting old then? She’s in the little window that was her seat in the evening. She’s in the kitchen and all its drawers. She’s in the special delicacy she made and left behind for me. She made plenty of it, like always. Why does it seem like it’s far too less now? She’s in her favourite TV shows. She’s in the newspapers she will neve...