Saturday, October 30, 2010

Excerpts

1:
The dug up roadside has dried too,looking like a miniature mountain range of valleys and dried rivers.The potholes have dried and the pebbles in them lay like unearthed treasures.  When the trucks ride across these holes they thud and throw dust in the air but no splashes or artworks of muddy water on tarmac roads. Rain's gone. Look how the panes collect sheets of dust, as if waiting for someone to write a name or just daub at them. And there, I have written my name, the curves so distinct before another layer would smudge them. Look how every morning the sun glows against them and each mote of dust shines like gold dust. Look how the rain left without warning.

It now fogs late at night and the streetlights release a hazy light. Every smell hangs close to the ground, every 

2:
It was quiet; kneel and you could hear the moist grass  crunch under their shifting feet. It was that quiet. The wind blew, gently drawn towards the vast empty stretches where it could go wild. That night it was as dry as a spinster's love but as gentle as a widow's walk, crisp with longing. It was warm though, as if it had escaped from under the folds of a Kashmiri Shawl. The park bench was lit by the solitary street-lamp that bent over the the bodies as it eavesdropped. It's nocturnal company, the mangy dog lay curled next to it with it's ears up in distrust for the unlikely neighbors at such an hour.

3:

But every evening, we smuggle ourselves, steal each other from under the weary eyes of the day and come to this place. For a brief moment our worlds touch each other and we shiver, as a welcome intrusion flirts with our closed lives with unfamiliar caresses.
We watch the lovers hide in their niches behind the rocks and hold a conversation with the sea- a triad symphony of unfathomable depths. We stand on the rocks and watch the tumbleweeds roll along the sandy shores, sometimes getting entangled but pushed along by the strong wind and our cheers. We exist on these rocks as anonymous, unnamed silhouettes grazed by the wind and spoken to by the waves. We watch every thing till it ignores us and the moment we feel that we are stared back, we turn our faces...we turn our faces. And when the night decides to cave in, afraid of losing our identity as shadows by the rocklines, we fade, we vanish, we break into a million wispy fragments....

4:

About a Prostitute and Beggar:

I am a beggar Rukhsana. I live close to the dust, the spit-balls, the leftovers and the licked clean leaf-bowls,the torn clothes and the split shoes. But I am fortunate that my only hunger lies below my chest and above the waist, where the insides churn and burn for a morsel. But then I see that we row the same boat, we stitch the same torn clothes. Deprived, dispensable gobbets of flesh to be used or mauled and then despised at the end. We both are paid only when we put ourselves down in our own eyes,and we have our defenses against our guilt. And one day we will die a famous death, I'll be on every pair of lips-"The man who crawled the streets died today." and so will you. But our fame will be short lived. And one night, under the same stars, the same sky and by the same alley one more of me will be asking the same questions to one more of you. We both are the indispensable and inevitable parts of our worlds...the deprived, dispensable gobbets of flesh.

2 comments:

  1. I like the last excerpt the most...
    it reminds me of something, we all have a chance to fame...no matter how short lived it is...
    we rise, like a bubble only to explode on the surface, when the moment is gone, we are forgotten

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  2. Something rings here... there's mystery in the writings... though beautiful.. :)

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