My grandfather;
Tall, stern, serious
A bit tabooed to be talked about
And yet all he is
A collection of tales,
Casual remarks in casual conversations,
Distant rare imaginations,
My grandfather;
The old photo framed on the wall,
A voice unheard,
A face too blurred to be a memory,
Hero of his death anniversary,
A sad record of a treatment gone wrong,
The arms that never touched,
The eyes that never blinked,
Too distant to ever be close,
Too absent to ever be remarked,
In my head he lays
Silent
Still
Often unnoticed
A black and white picture
With a necklace of artificial flowers
That has been existing even before I existed
His presence unabashedly unknown to ever be missed
My grandfather;
A caricature of my could be’s
Of my occasional curiosity
Of the vague answers of my questions
Some of which didn’t even qualify to be remembered
My grandfather;
Tall, stern, serious
Shamelessly insignificant, creatively mysterious,
His unheard laughter, his unheard stories
Vastly scattered blanks among the words;
those unidentified glories
My grandfather;
Bits of handmade memories
Smugness of an insolent brain,
Horrors of a guilt ridden heart;
A truth with no sugar coated exaggerations
A known man unknown
My grandfather.
Month: October 2016
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Every night I sleep with a different state of mind. Old plans are screwed, new plans are made. There are new criteria for judging myself and there are new reasons to be hopeful. Everyday, I wake up with a different head. Sometimes there is a perpetual smile on my face and I keep wondering why am I even happy. Sometimes, I am destitute, I can’t find sources for my dismay and the day gets worse and worse. I love roller coaster rides but life takes my love too seriously. I mean I don’t mind these hellish rides, but I would like to get off of it sometimes. I would appreciate it better in its absence. It’s complicated; I know it doesn’t have to be and I know in my heart that life really is kind of simple. But it’s hard not to be the way we are.We expect too much and we stress too much, we are sad about things that don’t deserve our sorrow, we are bored but we do nothing about it and then we are sad again, we are annoyed because we don’t know really what to do, we are meaningless because what does a drop mean in the midst of an ocean, we are not genetically superior- not too smart, not too beautiful, not too cool, not too talented in any area, we are just there! Just there! Our reason to exist- an utter mystery! We look at the greener grass at the other side, meanwhile someone else mistakes the grass that we are standing on to be green and we weave up our escape plans, scrap them next morning realizing that we are just not that passionate. What are we passionate about then? We turn to our heart for an answer. Of course he doesn’t speak.We long ago threw up our hands because no matter what we do, no manipulating technique can convince us to pursue what we seem to love. We will never be good enough. People will tell you, they will encourage you – Don’t you underestimate yourself child! Well, what if we are not? What if our ‘underestimate’ is actually an exact estimate. And this is how the second person who resides in you will never get convinced. He will remain skeptical. He will shut the other person up every time. Every dreamy, enticing, glamourous plan will be scrapped by him right away. There he is, the other dreamy person in your head, residing in the dustbin now.
This dominating boring person isn’t that bad though. He will console you as well. He will encourage you to accept things how they are. He will ask you, beg you to cherish your present situation, to see the beauty of it. He will ask you to be happy. Yes, he won’t let you picture the grandness. Yes, he would cut all those day dreams right in the middle. Yes, he will be an asshole! But is he? What’s wrong with his point of view? He is asking you to be happy! What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with being ordinary, what’s wrong if we are not an artist or a traveller or a photographer or a writer or a scientist or a chef? What’s wrong if we leave our homes at nine and come back at five, if we don’t have an instagram account that shows them mountains and oceans or those spontaneous weekend get aways? What’s wrong with that? Why do we have to crucify our ordinary lives? And ordinary jobs? You tell everyone to be special – Well, Newsflash! – You are not. You are boring. Your life is not glamourous. Your sadness is annoying. Your cribbing doesn’t make sense. And you, just you, not your boss or your classmates or your friends or your parents, you, with your own beautiful hands are making yourself miserable.
That’s what this person is trying to tell you. So, is he an asshole, really? Okay, maybe he is. But when you think of it, isn’t the other dreamy person an asshole as well?
I am not asking you to be happy with who you are – that thing doesn’t happen with a blog post.What I am trying to tell you is that there are two people in your head. One won’t let you do what you want to do. Other won’t let you do what you currently do.Both of them are equally evil.
I don’t myself know how to handle them.But sometimes, when you are walking across the street(or maybe not), when the wind is right (or maybe not), when there are flower petals fallen on the ground glorifying your entrance (or maybe not), when your shoes don’t bite (or maybe they do), when your laptop bag isn’t that heavy (or maybe it is), when you had had just the right amount of food at your favourite food place (or maybe not), you can choose to ignore both of these idiots and just breath and realize what a bliss that is.
Fuck everything else.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if I forget you tomorrow but by continuing to write this I am contradicting the very first statement. Anyway, you know what – I am not a smoker but you might be the reason I might want to turn into one. Of course, you as a reason, aren’t strong enough but in this moment, I can give you that at least. Not that I am falling in love; I , being stereotypical and secretly judgemental as hell as always need a ground breaking, sky falling reason to fall in love with any person and you! Well, you drive trucks for a living so… I am sorry that I am biased and I can’t respect you. I am sorry since you might not even be remotely close to the person I am assuming you to be but I can’t change my mind. Hence all this – I disrespecting you and be amazed by you at the same time is quite puzzling.
On a closer inspection though I realize that I don’t even remember your face or even the colour of your shirt ( Was it red?). I am not even curious. However, what preoccupies my head is – those threads of smoke dancing in the air, carelessly gliding, flowing and bending through the curves of your lips. What preoccupies my head is how into the air they went, out of your mouth; soft mesmerizing disappearing bunch of white directionless trajectories. You seemed like a sorcerer – blowing fog out of your mouth that incredible way! It was beautiful. Aren’t all dangerous things are?
Good, that you are not aware that I am staring at you. Good that you would never know my name or be aware of my existence – we don’t need to acknowledge these mundane things after all. And to be brutally honest, I don’t care if you live or die – we are,after all, still strangers. But may I just interject that I think that you were born to smoke? I know it sounds stupid or maybe even offensive but you do it so beautifully! Effortlessly! There’s no performance! There’s no smugness! There’s no compulsion to appear cool. You don’t care if you are being watched at all! And as I watch you pass by, slowly and yet swiftly out of the frames of the window of my seat, I nail your images in the walls of my head shamelessly extolling the beauty of your shameless addiction even though you never asked for any of this. I have no clue why you caught the fancy of my head at all! But I had to capture you somewhere other than my feeble unreliable memory. I don’t get why it’s a necessity but my attention or admiration doesn’t seek any kind of qualifications – just a mild touch of oddity, that’s all. In that way, you are perfectly qualified.
You seem to be entangled in your own trail of thoughts. You are not looking anywhere or at anyone or anything. Your eyes are just pointed towards a direction of indifference. It’s nothing extraordinary I guess but I am amazed since it makes you a perfect picture. And your mouth is a cryogen! As if a scientist made special arrangements in his lab just to place you there. As if an artist spent months just to paint that white cloud coming out of your mouth beautifully diffusing around your face.
I might never see you again by the way. I am grateful for that. And even if I do I wouldn’t recognize you at all or go speak to you – that being way out of my comfort zone. But then still, these few seconds of catching your glimpse are precious. How do I explain it? I don’t understand it myself. You, the smoke, the cryogenics, the magic, the cloud, the fog – all but a puff of beedi…!!
And there at a distance, a crazy writer, is sitting in the bus, lauding your possibly worst habit to incomprehensibly impossible heights.
How do I explain this? I just know that I can’t deny the sad, remarkable, abnormal beauty of this perfect picture.Of your perfect picture.
The Turquoise Ink 