The Turquoise Ink

Fuckboys

November 20th, 2017

You are beautiful,
You are beautiful, almost,
When you forget to sync sound to your thoughts,
God I am soaking wet under your accented syllables (just the syllables?)
Sometimes they make sense,
Sometimes I forget to make sense out of them.
You are beautiful,
Really, in all your peculiarity,
The hair falling on your forehead,
The walk with your shoulders slightly converged,
Snigger, giggle, god if only you’d shut up,
I can paint your naked portrait in my head,
And maybe even worship it,
If only you’d shut up
And kiss
And touch
And what not.
Man, you could call me the one with weird choices,
Benefits of doubts, suppressed judgement and mostly I, trying to choose the right thing among infinite voices,
A mistake – I know it,
But trust me I have read the Terms & Conditions,
A mistake – I know it,
But what’s life without one?
So, hey weirdo!
I invite you to be among my favorite anecdotes,
I invite you to invite me into a situation that none of us has to care about,
Kiss me again, I know you would,
Lust wins after all,
I might just find meaning out of your babbles,
Once, twice, maybe a couple of more times,
As long as I keep experiencing paradise under your dexterous tongue,
Among other things.

*
How’s life in England?

November 10th, 2017

“So, how’s life in England?” My phone notifies me of yet another text bearing the same question I’ve heard daily since the past two months. And I am left wondering, yet again, how the hell do I answer this?

How’s life in England? Each day, I wake up with a slight hangover because somehow I have developed a habit of mistaking beer for water. The morning begins with me brewing a tasteless tea and slicing an apple, often along with my fingers. Then I connect my phone to the speakers as I eat my so-called breakfast and start preparing my lunch. Two months back, cooking was my least favorite task and now it is my top choice for procrastination. I chop vegetables while dancing to some 2000s rock. I still don’t know how I manage to pull that off. The day progresses as I finish cooking my lunch which is almost never completely consumed by me. I leave some curry for my flatmates. And by the evening, there’s no trace of it left. My utensils are cleaned and neatly placed back in my shelf. Cooking a little extra so that you don’t have to clean? I figure it’s a pretty good strategy to go by. But this is not what you want to know, do you?

How’s life in England? Well, mostly it’s the blue sky and chartreuse grass spread across remarkably vast stretches of land. Each day I discover a new breed of dog. Each day I come across those cars that I never thought I would see in three dimensions with my own eyes. Each day I meet different kinds of people. And almost each day, I write about them in a small cafe with a small blackboard placed at its gate happily flaunting the beautiful handwriting and the supposedly reasonable rates of different kinds of coffees. Hours pass by as I type random stuff on random things and before it gets too cold (and it’s not even Winter yet!) I return to my kitchen to enjoy a multi-cuisine dinner cooked by flatmates. My kitchen is not a particularly attractive one. The dining table is almost never cleaned. Sometimes, the refrigerators stink. Noone is ever able to find his/her plates or spoons or coffee cup on time. When one of us burns food accidentally, we don’t pray for our own safety. Instead we pray for the inefficiency of the smoke detector. I look at the small exhaust, the electric heat stove, the rarely used oven, the toaster that partially works and the silver platform that’s turning grey – This kitchen is as ordinary as it can be. I look at the people I am dining with. This kitchen is my favorite place. But this is not what you want to know either, is it?

How’s life in England? Whenever the sun shines outside my tiny window my heart swells with happiness and hope. And then I think of the pending work, my spinning head and my heart immediately sinks. My table is splashed with my clumsiness. I am running out of clean clothes to wear. The bedsheet of my bed is beginning to stink. The mattress has given me a permanent back ache but I love my tiny little corner. My cupboard is bare but surprisingly, I don’t hate my limited collection of clothes. I am slipping below the poverty line slowly but steadily. However, somehow I don’t hate my depleting financial state. I am not sure why I am here sometimes. To write life? To live life? Sometimes my room haunts me too – to make it more eerie, there are unexplained bruise marks on my limbs. My financial burden haunts me. My insecurity and uncertain future haunts me. My dreams haunt me. But I am here anyway, I guess, happily haunted.

Days in England – It was clear sky a second ago and it’s suddenly raining. And despite the unpredictable weather, I can safely predict that it would never rain when I do have an umbrella with me. The cloudy night sky is bit of a shame but at times when it is clear I can almost get lost among the diamonds shining above, along with the silhouettes of the trees caressing the edges of the river. And then there’s the moon. The same moon I wrote a letter to saying that I would do what I love to do and in some surreal way I am still keeping that promise. I like to picture myself looking at this satellite somewhere someday in the future and instead of the moon, I like to believe that I would be looking at my own present self. We would briefly acknowledge each other, smile and whisper, “It is going to be alright.” The moon is my imaginary time travelling machine. When I look at it now, I suddenly see myself searching for it through the clusters of buildings back in Vadodara or strolling under the moonlight through the peaceful beaches of Goa during my final undergraduate year or picturing nose or eyes on it during my kindergarten days.

How’s my life? Each day I am going older. Each day I am learning something new. Though I can’t specifically point out the change but I can still feel a certain kind of novelty running through my blood. Life in England – It’s the walks among the pretty homes in red bricks. It’s playing with the amber leaves lining the footpaths. It’s being marvelled by the sparrows with orange necks. It’s walking through the trails lining the river. It’s catching a brief experience of forest and making an escape from urban life during those walks. Living here is modern and ancient at the same time. I am simultaneously falling in love in Swedish beer and cutting masala chai found in the streets of India. I am simultaneously falling in love with butter croissant and Latte and also with freshly cooked potato paratha made by my mother back home. I am amazed by the quiet and peaceful locality but at the same time I sometimes miss the crowd and the cacophony as well.

It’s writing, so much writing, reading, scribbling, dancing, drinking and being terrified of the fact that these days are disappearing much faster than they should and also the fact that I would miss this more terribly than I can ever imagine. My life in England? Well, honestly, life seems to be chasing me instead of I chasing it for a change. At first it was overwhelmingly surreal. Now, it’s overwhelmingly busy. Like the gas compressed in a cylinder, it seems like a whole lifetime has been squeezed into a couple of months. Weeks are long but yet they fly by. And sometimes all I do is breathe and watch yet another sun explode into thousands of shades of Crimson and Magenta and all those hues that I can’t even name.

“So, how’s life in England?” My phone is still beeping with that whatsapp message.
“Good.” I text back.
I don’t miss home,

October 5th, 2017

Of course I don’t miss home,
Though it’s cold out here but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I miss the warmth.
Of course I don’t miss home,
Yes, I confess that the green bed of my dorm,
The matching duvets and pillows aren’t as somniferous as the violet hues of my room,
The humongous pin board bears such a vast scope for creativity,
But I admit it seems that I have left it all behind on the walls of a small place that I am not supposed to think much about.
But still I don’t miss home,
Not when I look through my tiny window and remember how large it used to be.
I don’t miss home,
I am too happy to bear such delusions,
After all the beauty of my surroundings hasn’t even sunk in,
The notion that I might be sharing same time and same space as this place still lies dangling as a mad hypothesis,
I haven’t properly forgotten the crowds, the dust, the hot weather of the past,
I haven’t even forgotten the sweat, the noise, the boredom, the four walls confining my life,
I haven’t forgotten that the food wasn’t always this tasteless,
I haven’t forgotten that the water used to cheaper than alcohol,
I haven’t forgotten about the time I had to waste,
I haven’t forgotten the anticipation, the butterflies, the apprehensions,
Regarding what that could now be called my present,
I haven’t forgotten much,
Despite being here,
I haven’t forgotten anything at all.
Though the dates in my calendar keeps rapidly changing,
Perhaps I can sit here listening to the same downtrodden playlist,
With my pen and a few things in my head to reminisce,
I can sit here for eternity or so it seems,
I can sit here pretending that the time is frozen.
So I don’t miss home.
I don’t miss it at all.
When I wake up tomorrow,
It would still be incredibly hard to believe
That I am here
Miles away,
In a strange beautiful land,
With strange people,
Under strange circumstances.
Some call it bold,
Some call it cowardly escape,
Some call it love,
Some call it outrageous stupidity,
Some exclaim in disbelief,
Some silently mutter in jealousy,
Some say “You don’t deserve it.”
Some say, “You are worth every penny.”
Some, so many,
All these people in my head,
Who travelled overseas on free tickets with me,
An entire world,
An infuriating celestial miracle,
Obnoxious electrochemical reactions inside my brain,
These people and I,
My room, my pen, the blue blue sky,
Beautiful things, beautiful places, beautiful beautiful faces,
That I peek through my invisibility cloak,
That I look at in wonder,
That I look at with curiosity,
That I look at in boredom…
Happy places, laughing faces,
Of course,
Of course it’s too early to miss home,
Too early to miss the recent past,
Too early to miss the current present.

What is this?
I,
Caught up in a few fucked up tenses,
Trying to make some decent sentences,
Stringing along the pearls of words,
Trying to weave a good fabric through some odd phrases,
Living the life,
Denouncing it at the same time,
Awed, and indifferent,
Amazed and hurt.
How nice! How wonderful!
How enigmatic! How treacherous!
How confusing! How difficult!
A simple question;
A lost answer,
And all this adventure in between –
“What do you want, dear heart?”

***
Things that I don’t understand – III

September 13th, 2017
1. Fluid mechanics. Office politics. And heart
2. Black holes. Black-heads. What existed before big bang. And heart.
3. X-men movie timeline, Donnie Darko and why I suck at receiving compliments.
He looked at me for a second or two. But I kid you not that time frame felt like an entire age! Of course, I couldn’t hold his gaze back. I always lost when asked to stare in that stupid game – Truth, dare & stare. Look at you, dear brain – how quickly you dug up a memory from a decade ago. And where are these excellent abilities of yours when I am searching for my keys? Anyway, I am on a date and not only have I received the whole middle school flashback during a supposedly romantic gaze, I have also noticed some minor cracks in the ceiling and patches of dampness on it sprinkled here and there. If you look at them carefully, you would realize that they look like skin disease. To be more precise, they look like Eczema. How do I know that? Because I had Eczema almost my entire childhood. Wow, I can see we are travelling back(er) in time. Are you sure it’s not even been a second? Look at the wall! It’s ruined too! Why don’t builders hire good plumbers? Wait, do good plumbers even exist? Why won’t you stop looking at me, you idiot? “Because he likes you, you idiot!”, someone in my brain replies. I quickly shrug off the thought fearing it might result in either of two completely opposite reactions, none of which are desirable right now – embarrassment or a shy blush. I glance through the limited book collection in the small book shelf nearby and quickly deduce that the owner obviously doesn’t read. Though the company of any of these books would have been better than the pair of eyes still fixated at me. Oh my god, how can time be this long? “You are not being a nice person”, some voice in my head feels entitled to express its opinion again. Well, that’s your problem brain, thought process is completely your department. Then my ears receive the stimulus of his voice. I see the girl, sitting behind him instead. In my defense, she is dressed pretty smartly and she is pretty pretty too. I know it’s rude not to listen to people when they are talking. So, I finally drag my attention, the incredibly heavy attention that weighs too much to even be touched at all, back to him. His words, I don’t remember. Random things, random people, a small poem he wrote, a girl he used to like, a place he once visited, things he read, things he did not read, movies he watched, people he loved, so many things he might have talked about but I don’t remember. It’s a shame I guess, all I do remember is his lips moving, mouthing some words which could have been in English or Croatian altogether. His upper lip half covered with the mustache and lower lips looked as if swollen from a recent kiss. “Or maybe an anticipation of a kiss?” Thanks for that input, brain. But this is a date, isn’t it? Inputs like this aren’t really that inappropriate. Date, yes. This reminds me that I need to buy some dates, it’s been ages since we have had them. How about we go to Dubai to buy some dates? Of course, it’s a good time to talk nonsense. Ah, no, the first cliched place we are going to visit is Paris. We are going to sit and stare at the Eiffel tower from dusk to dawn. We are going to buy that shirt that says – J’aime la Paris. We are going to eat Croissants and drink wine instead of water. Sorry to interrupt but there’s person in front of you who has probably asked you a question and I think you should reply. “What?” I manage to mutter with an apologetic smile. “I like you” he says. Croissants and wine. You forgot to include cheese. Cheese & chocolate croissants and wine, happy? And Eiffel tower and that museum Dan Brown wrote about. “Hey! Are you even here?”
No. I am in Paris. I am busy doing all those overrated things as a part of an automatic defense mechanism against your recent statement and expectations.
“Yes, here.”
“So, don’t you have anything to say?”
“Nothing yet.”
He gives an understanding nod. Aww…that’s sweet. And the moment I confess this, some other voice in my head taunts, “Why are you doing this to him! He is nice!” I know and with this storms in the guilt, as if waiting impatiently just outside the door the whole time. The Paris dream vanishes in the air. The damp patches in the wall turns invisible. This is my turn to look at him. He smiles and sips the coffee, which is savored by a few caffeine addicted strands of his mustache too. Probably you are going to write a poem on this later. On him? On my guilt? Or the mustache drenched in coffee? You know I won’t. There’s only one asshole I write poems about and in the end they don’t even turn out to be about him. “Not a good moment to be thinking of your ex, just saying,”someone retorts in my head again.
“Up for dessert?” I ask, trying to change the topic.
“No, I think you are already enough sweet to handle.”
What?
“Too cheesy?” He asks.
“Yes.”
Good, at least he knows. And did he just say no to desserts?
“I warned you I am cheesy.”
When? Maybe when you were in Paris munching on Croissants or Dubai buying dates.
“And I am not done yet…I have been meaning to tell you this all evening so I am just going to be done with it -You are really beautiful.” he says.
Right. He could have called me a rogue. He could have called me dumb and accused that I couldn’t even do arithematic. He could have told me how judgmental I am. He could have told me that I am disgusting especially when I make noise when I chew. He could have told me that my posture isn’t right. I tend to slouch and walk like Shaggy in Scooby Doo. He could have told me that I am malnourished and probably too tall! He could have told me all of these and I would have been offended, yes but I would have survived. But instead he says – You are really beautiful. And I am more offended than I can EVER be. This is what I don’t understand.

*
A love letter

September 10th, 2017

Dear,
How scandalous and embarrassing of me to anticipate for the day when I will be able to speak to you again,
when you are not supposed to exist,
when your charm is something I should easily resist
But look how glittering you are!
Even the dawn can’t make your presence disappear
How tempting it is to touch you,
even though it’s a common knowledge how toxic you are
How attractive it is to pursue you,
even though it’s widely known how forbidden you are
O Honey! O Darling!
Why mustn’t you desert my heart?
You bring death to my life,
You bring life to my death,
You bring love, you bring hate,
You bring joy, you frustrate,
You destroy, you create.
Are you even real?
How embarrassing and scandalous of me to be influenced by you so much,
Wasn’t my life already complicated enough?
No, it is pointless to accuse you
Because I think you make my life simpler instead.
You are blood into my veins,
Air that I could breathe,
Despite your debatable actuality,
You mean,
You exist,
As if nothing else matters.

***
Dead lives,

September 2nd, 2017

Dead lives, dead leaves,
Scattered across the grey streets,
On a soulless journey to nowhere or everywhere
with the winds sweeping them onto different destinations
With the time decaying them back into life;
Just so they could fall lifeless once again.
What do you hope to find in this circular maze?
How are you different from other carbon corpses?
Dead eyes, dead voice,
After all, a beating heart was never your choice!
Like the stones, like the deepest ocean bed,
You are silently waiting for the end ahead.
Hush!Hush!Hush!
Don’t think it too loud!
Hush!Hush!Hush!
The stars might overhear!
Time might end today or after infinity,
But the blood must continue running stale in your veins
The thoughts must wander lost always.
Dead leaves, dead lives,
sleeping indifferently on the streets at nights.
Make sure there’s never anything to see
Make sure that the eyes are always wide shut
For if they blink open, if they ever do,
It will all come fiercely rushing through,
in all its unfairness,
tearing apart your blissfully protective wall of indifference-
The storming life,
The warrior love,
valiantly destroying your ignorant existence,
Your living death.

***
I am an Alien

August 23rd, 2017

Beautiful places, beautiful people, beautiful pictures
And I am not a part of it
Despite being a part of it
My existence – dusted at some neglected corner
not meant to be discovered,
I stand silent, trying to admire, trying to convince
that I am in love with what lays before me
An ineffective camouflage for how really detached I feel
In my head, I am already miles away
Though I stand right here
In my head, I am already mourning the separation
Though I haven’t felt a single ounce of love for your company
In my head, I am crying over an alternate future
Though I can’t even admire the present.
Beautiful pictures, beautiful places, beautiful you!
Would you call me insensitive?
Is my heart really a stone?
Never overwhelmed or underwhelmed
I am just whelmed
Not too happy, not too hurt, not too furious
I anticipate a storm inside
But there’s no destruction
There’s no scope for creation
For a poet –
I am surprisingly devoid of turbulences
Maybe I am being too harsh
Maybe I am being too vain
All this meaningless rant –
Beautiful pictures, beautiful places, beautiful people!
And I am not a part of it
Despite being a part of it.
I am an alien and I couldn’t be more ordinary.

*
Somewhere in the Universe

August 22nd, 2017

“You have nothing to say to me?” you asked, sounding a bit surprised.

I looked at you and my head jolted me with a series of flashbacks of numerous diary entries, self-conversations and monologues.

It’s not like I have nothing to say to you. Perhaps I have a million things to say to you. But I can’t say anything. You can’t say anything, despite being a writer? Writers are the ones who struggle the most for the right words! Of course I don’t have words to say it! But are there really any confessions or accusations I would like to make? No. I am a blank chit, devoid of emotions. I am not generally like this. You know how I am! I am brimming with all kinds of emotions most of the time. Sometimes, it’s so overwhelming that it gets quite out of control. I have pictured this conversation so many times in my head and every time in every single scenario, I had no words to say to you. Why? You might ask. It’s not like I have not been hurt by you. Maybe I am still in denial and I am not willing to truly accept it. Maybe I am not that hurt and I want myself to be hurt just to know what heart-break tastes like. I have no definite answer for that. But you give me nothing but indifference and all these fictitious conversations in my head. Each day I am colder and more aloof. However, I still remember – You. I don’t know how I do that. I am sure you never intended this. Well, of course, you never intended this! But to be honest, your intentions don’t matter anyway. I know what I meant to you – Nothing! And there is nothing wrong with that. When I think about you, I never consider my own judgment or perception or my own state of mind/heart; I become you or whoever I think you are. And from your point of view, my meaninglessness in your life makes perfect sense. That’s why maybe I don’t have anything held against you. If am zero for you, well, I am a zero. I don’t mind being like that. It’s refreshing in a way. Obviously if I had any choice, I would definitely like to change that. But I can’t do that. It’s your life. You are the protagonist. Protagonists have their own characteristics; they don’t follow a writer’s rule! They make their own rules! I have nothing to say to you because you still mean so much to me and I can’t really confess that without you being offended. Offending you would be a delight but I have no energy for that neither the will. Maybe what you’d feel is not offence but guilt and then you’d ask for my forgiveness. How can I forgive you if I don’t even have an answer for whether at all I had ever been hurt? I have nothing to say to you because in my head I have said it all. There are things that I remember. There are things that I have forgotten. There are things that I am grateful for. There are things that I am sorry for. In my life you would always have a value despite my failure in gaining the same in yours. It’s not a shame. It’s a tragic beauty. But I can’t say it, at least not in a way that makes sense to you or even to me.

“No” I nodded as I nervously glanced down at my wrist watch and eagerly waited for time to pass by. You glanced at your watch too. “Is there anything you would like to say?” I asked trying to ease the awkwardness. I received a familiar nod from you. We both looked at each other with artificial smiles pasted on our faces and secretly acknowledged that this was indeed the last time we were (not) enjoying each other’s company. And yet, I saw the fireworks in the background at our last good bye as if conveying that even our last miscommunication and small insignificant mis-story had the capability to create a minuscule impact somewhere in the universe.

***
An Ode to the Deadlines

August 16th, 2017

So long I had postponed
Owing to the mispositions of stars
Or maybe just the urgency to complete utterly unnecessary tasks
A day after another after another after another
Until you came finally,
As you had, once upon a forgotten time, forewarned
So, here’s to the panic
to the parade of chaos that you have brought along
to the adrenaline rush
to the songs of forbidden words
to the regret of wasted yesterdays
No, no prayer is to be sung to the goddess of procrastination today,
No! Don’t you dare, you treacherous mind…
Today isn’t a good day
Today is the DEADLINE!
The day where the work of 10 months is compressed in 72 hours
So, here’s to the supernatural productivity
To the last minute shortcuts
To the funny gods
To the funnier prayers
To the fake promises
To a distant dream of equal work division over time
Commutimism as they call it
And finally to completion of the since long incompleted
Scribbled, battered, stitched along the odd edges
Ugly, with gruesome scars of laziness
But who cares about the beauty though?
At least the end is here.
We will start the next project tomorrow.
Or maybe the tomorrow after tomorrow
Or the tomorrow after that
But for now, we are done.
Ready to repeat our mistake all over again
With a false and yet believable hope let’s completely forget the stress and pain,
Of course, we are going to be alright,
As long as we celebrate the ending and not the perfection
My lazy ‘this-would-do-just-fine’ success brought by an odd hero of mine,
What would I do without you my beloved deadline?

***
The Study Table – III

August 9th, 2017

I

II

III

Life moves on. So, I moved on too –

My new destination? A scrap yard. How did I come to be there? Didn’t I tell you that my ex-owner found me too old and too obese for his “renovated” home? He was so sure of my ugliness and my uselessness that he didn’t even put me up on sale – He threw me straight to the Scrap yard. Before I could even analyze my surroundings, I was taken by a roadside barber. So, now I had a new job role. I watched people come and go, some getting shaved, some getting massaged and some getting their hair cut. I remember how happy the mirror placed on me used to be. I despised her. Her happiness made me grow immensely jealous of her. With each passing day, I became more and more morose. Throwing me away like garbage after all those years of my diligent service wasn’t a fair treatment. Couldn’t he just chop me off and use me in a bonfire? I would have been happy with that. Sitting there, by the road, was humiliating! I am the one who needs to be kept sedated with smell of books. I am the one who survives in the presence of poetry or the equations of chemical reactions or trigonometry problems. The lumps of hair accumulating on me were infuriating. The barber scratching the razors on me didn’t make me feel better either. Initially, I had thought that the girl was worst. Then I thought that the scrap yard was the worst. But somehow, I kept descending to worse of worsts! I was tempted to call the barber worst too. But I couldn’t, fearing the ironic implication of that statement. Nevertheless, fate took the unintentional and the unsaid challenge anyway.

The barber abruptly left one day. Initially, it seemed like a dream come true. But in reality, it has been a nightmare. I spend my days and nights alone on the road side. So, I get roasted in the afternoons, wet in the rains and remain immensely dusty all the time. The horns of the cars haunt me, my loneliness haunts me, my uselessness haunts me, my existence haunts me and I stand waiting, waiting for my end to finally make an entrance. The way things are progressing or regressing, I am sure my end isn’t far. But if it is, if it is somehow still far, then the worst haunts me. And here you are – miraculously standing with that unwavering look of admiration in your eyes. I am not flattered. I am amazed. For a moment, I am tempted to forget what I have been through. For a moment, I am tempted to be hopeful. For the first time in a really long time, I am happy. It doesn’t have to last long. I know it won’t. But I am grateful to you for this. I am grateful to you indeed.

“It’s a pity how this table is thrown here. It should be used, it’s so pretty!” I hear the woman’s voice.

“Pretty old, you mean. Pretty broken, you mean. Pretty ugly, you mean.” Her friend replies and I find myself agreeing with him.

“Pretty apt for our café, I meant.” The woman replies.

“This? For our café? No way!”

“What’s wrong! It matches with the theme. Plus, I will work on it. I will make it pretty presentable and pretty awesome, you will see!”

“I am not so sure…”

The woman comes near me. I shiver at her proximity. I shiver at her touch. It really had been a long time since any human had stood so close to me.

“The table is old, yes, I know. But the wood is still good, see? They don’t make such furniture anymore! Let’s take it to our garage. I will repair it.”

“You do that in a month’s time. Or else I will throw it.”

“You can count on me!” she replies excitedly.

I refuse to believe my ears. Does she really mean it? After this long series of abandonment, did this just happen for real?

Epilogue

I was sure I was going to return to the road again. I didn’t think I was repairable. I was sure that the woman would give up on me soon. Miraculously, she didn’t. I ended up being in her café instead. I couldn’t believe my own transformation. Though I am no longer a study table I admit, but I am always sedated with a stack of books at my corner. Quite often, I am also greeted by the heat of laptops and the mild heat of the hot coffee filtered through the coasters. Sometimes I am greeted by interesting conversations, interesting people scribbling interesting things in their notebooks and I love it. I love it all. But then amidst all these beautiful chaos and entropy, I keep myself reminding that I am, at the end of the day, just a table.

***