The Long and the Short of It

I love my teeny tiny bought from Mango shorts.

My ex boyfriend thinks they are skanky. And my male friends jokingly ask who I am trying to entice every time I wear them. But like someone I know to be sensible once said... “They are shorts, and shorts are meant to be.... well... short”. I kinda tend to agree.

What’s the point of shorts if they don’t show endless amounts of leg. If I wanted to cover my legs I would wear pants. I am not wearing them to attract attention nor does wearing them make me a morally loose character. Silly as it is, wearing my shorts instantly transfer me to sunny beaches. A bit like Dorothy and her sparkly red shoes in the Wizard of Oz.

I just feel that along with freedom to speech and all the rest of it we also have the freedom to dress how we want without being judged and stared at. After all, You are what you wear and aren’t your clothes a way of expression?

I like dressing accordingly to my mood, And if every morning while getting dressed I have to do it according to what others will think or how many men will stare down my cleavage, its just not fair.

The (mostly male) opposition might argue that in a country like India its not ‘safe’ to wear clothes like this and walk around on the streets. It most definitely isn’t. But isn’t it our social obligation as fellow citizens to try and expand this narrow minded thinking and to educate the repressed Indian male masses?  

Can we truly call ourselves a progressive, liberal and democratic society if a woman in certain kind of clothing is not safe? Keeping women in burqas (or any other equivalent) is not the way of ensuring their safety.

Being a coward and covering up is not the solution. As women this is our battle. So got out there. Wear those shorts (or whatever you want). It is for the greater social good. As long as you aren’t planning to go shopping on Linking road in a bikini.

Dead Things

There is this place where we smoke. This old abandoned building. Its under dispute and the guard there watches over the building and us... the trespassers.

There are piles of brick and garbage outside. And He sits on this rickety chair at the entrance, with cobwebs and dirt for company, behind a door which isn’t there anymore. It looks like the world around him is falling. He doesn’t say much, other asking us if we don’t have work on the days we visit more often than usual.

I parked myself on the steps today and lit a cigarette when one of the boys pointed out that there was a dead thing behind me. I leapt up before even looking at it. They laughed. It really was a thing. All mushed up and unidentifiable as anything that could have once been living. Grossed out I asked the guard why he hadn’t thrown it away. “Because he collects them” I was told, followed by another stream of giggles. “He had a dead pigeon here the other day”. Ewwwww, I thought of all the things to collect. “What did you do with it?” I asked him with morbid interest in the remains of the pigeon and wanting to find out the fate of this new carcass. Trying to peer in to see, I ask “Is it still there?” this time tauntingly. “I fed it to the cat, the cat will eat this also.” He replied matter offactly. I reeled with shock and disgust and thought him crazy. And then laughed. At my reaction. And at how quick I was to judge him and nature. These were dead things. Dead. And this is the way nature meant it to be.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Maybe he thinks of it as ecological recycling or maybe to him it’s just cat food.

Goodmorning Morning

Morning sets in long before I open my eyes. It slowly creeps up on me and pulls me close, holding me like its never going to let me go. It is claustrophobia which is comforting. I can feel it through the length of my body, pressed against me, trying to cradle me awake. Its touch is soft.... and its breath down my neck softer than any breeze. Senses awakening before i do... I turn around to smell it. Still with my eyes shut. It reminds me of home... and of distant places. And oceans i wouldn’t mind drowning in as long as its warmth envelopes me. The sun kisses my face and cajoles my eyes to open. Unwilling, they open languidly. The world is out of focus and Morning waits impatiently. I look up at it and smile. Morning enters my soul... Sometimes reality is better than dreaming.

Love Dont Live here Anymore

Love lived in many places... in the areas between your neck and shoulders... I found it while I searched for your smell. In the monsoons that witnessed our love as it beat against your widow... as raging as our passion. On your bed with your mattress soaked in our sweat. It lived in your breath that you breathed down my neck as you lay there sleeping. Love lived in places you kissed and the places I touched. It lived in the air that suddenly smelt of you when you entered a room. And in the room that reeked of your absence once you were gone.

FairyFuckingTales

We sat at the bar trying find some common ground other than her… but the conversation kept coming back to the same thing. The similarities were too similar. You see… we were both women.

"I can see where she gets it from. And you too.... You are all like this. Not only is it a generic woman thing but you both especially seem to think you are princesses in distress locked up in a tower, with the worlds evil around you, expecting men to be the chivalrous knights in shinning armors.. which they aren’t and you only realize that once you have already ridden half way in to the sunset with them. You need to wake up and smell the rotting apple. Men have weaknesses which are demonstrated the moment a man falls in love with your deceptively innocent face… and life is not a fairy tale even tho your pretty little lives might have been."

Harsh words. But excuse me... life has never been a bed of pretty red thornless roses… fairytales preserve my sanity.

Mary Goes Round

What do you do when being on the merry go round just isn’t so merry. You know if you try n stop it you will get hurt and you cant just hop off cos god knows which direction that will throw you in. So you spin spin spin out of control. You wish you had known it would be like this before you got on. But it looked like so much fun then. Soon the head rush from spinning turns into dizziness and the butterflies in your stomach into knots. You really wish you had stuck to hopscotch. Everyone in the playground watches but no one can help. And you spin out of control wanting to stop. Or do you really? It’s a dark game. Definitely not for children. Merry go rounds should come with warning signs.

SunSet

I looked out of my rickshaw as I am throw out the match stick I just used to light my cigarette and saw the sky… Not exploding in to a thousand colors like it sometimes does at this time of the day, but silent with burning streaks of fiery pink and the sun melting somewhere behind it. I was caught in an acid dream and the world continued in its silhouette. Thinking of you as I often catch my self doing I ask the rickshaw driver to stop and take a picture I wish I could paint for you. By the time I get home the brooding moody blues have taken over. I attach the picture along with other attachments and mail it to you. The sun set for you… 

Some Old Stuff

1.
The mornings are the worst. I wake up in pain from dreams where u were running with me but then suddenly aren’t there and I am running alone. I turn to reach for you but there is emptiness where you said you anyway weren’t. I stare at the pillow next to me where you lay many mornings turned away from me as I counted the years and the white hair on your head which weren’t always there. 

I feel like an amputated patient lying on a hospital bed writhing in a pain he knows he is imagining. His mind plays tricks on him. They say it comes from the shock and disbelief over the loss of a limb. How do I deal with the loss of you? You were a part of my being. Maybe ‘were’ isn’t the right word to use. But then in these boundaries of silence that you and I have made for ourselves we can’t use any other words either. I feel like I am living the aftermath of war. And you have orphaned me of you.

Yes the mornings are the worst. When I wake up and my drug fucked brain from the night before is too sober to ignore the reality of you not being there…ever? Its not a reality I want to deal with today. I roll a joint. I roll you in it. I smoke it and watch you disappear into thin air.

The delete button isn’t working either. I think there is some kind of heavy duty virus in my system. I keep pressing it again n again but nothing happens. Delete. and you’re still here, sitting on my window ledge playing your guitar. Delete. I can still hear you voice, hear the things you said, those that hurt me and some that I loved. Delete. I can still feel your touch when I touch myself and the pain of you touching someone else doesn’t go away either. Delete. Memories. Delete love. Delete. 10 years. Delete. you. Delete Delete… please Delete.








2.
Don’t look there!! He shouted while trying to herd me away. What?... What is it? I asked trying to look around the crowded street but finding nothing in my perpetual half blind without glasses state. A man there with his skull split open stupid. I finally saw it. It was disgusting.. congealed blood and half peeled scabs. The man was moving back and forth and muttering to himself in his little centre stage that everyone was trying to do their best to ignore and succeeding mighty well. In frustration of wanting to do something but also at the same time like everyone else being too disgusted to I taunt… “if I was a guy I would go help him.” He stops in the middle of the road and turns around and says sarcastically “really? Then maybe I should.” “I never said that” I smile, “I just said I would have” and I walk towards hawkers selling belts on the roadside.. trying to distract myself from thoughts of abandoning the man on the footpath to die and so easily pretending to succeed.. We walk ahead.. to do our shopping of legal and illegal substances. 










3.
He loves me 
He loves me not
He loves me
He loves me not

I love you.
And I will love you forever
Profuckingmise

But then what is love?









4.

My girlfriend screams if I pee with the bathroom door open he told her. Really she said. I would hate it if my lover peed with the bathroom door locked.
They talked about men n women n how each was so similar to the rest of their own species that it was the differences that led to the ultimate attraction. And them cheating on each other as well she thot. Cos the differences r what is beautifull n what u hate. Differences in moles n marks, differences in thots, behaviors likes n dislikes, in the way the person breaths while asleep next to u, in the way they love n how they hate u. Differences in the way they move their mouths while eating food n the way they move while making love.
See like ur different from my girlfriend.
I wonder what he’s like?
She turns to look at him only to find him looking at her.
They share an intensity she found a bit too intimate between practical strangers like they were.
Maybe it was the pheromones at play….again?
Is he thinking of the same thing?
She breaks the silence by looking out of the auto.
Do u want to come over to my place to smoke a joint? He says.

5.

They decided to meet exactly mid way, since they were anyway half way across the world from each other. She called him randomly and he agreed on a lark. Well, life is pretty random and it’s a philosophy they both adapted to well.
He went to pick her up from the airport. He saw her in the distance and didn’t remember if she was as pretty as he remembered her so he thought it all over again anyway.
They hugged…. And to both of them it felt like coming home. Funny they both thought. They were practical strangers other than a few chance encounters in the middle of nowhere.
They chatted in the cab… caught up on the time they didn’t know about… some further than the recent past.
At the reception he entered their names as Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Mouse. She rolled her eyes and laughed, feeling a bit like a fantasy character tho Mickey and Mini isn’t quite exactly how she would have put it.
Entwined in their hotel room like two creepers that had known each other a long time she admitted to thinking momentarily if maybe for some reason it wasn’t such a good idea to call...but some reason wasn’t a good reason enough was it?
Lying under the stars a few nights later he told her it wasn’t. They both needed an escape from their realities and found it in each other… the greatest escapists of them all. What people don’t realize is that the present is as much of an escape as any other.
Today though, on this last day, a dark dark cloud loomed over their sunny beach. She lay there reminding him of where they were… golden skinned and watery eyed. If this were a postcard from this holiday I would send it home to me he thought.
The ‘what nows?’ had crept into till now what had been their perfect dreamscape. And like it they were now both elusive.