Ways Of Seeing

There are stories to be told in the way people look at each other. Especially around crowded rooms, meetings, clubs and malls. Most need to be translated from the author's native language to be understood. But some can be heard, read and observed if you pay close attention. 
You see there are ways of seeing, even in the dark of the night.

The-I'm worried for your happiness, and how you wear it carelessly like a dress with the straps falling off- gaze.

The- I want you right here, right now, but anyone else will also do- gaze.

The- it's a crowded room tonight but desperately trying to avoid you makes the corners of my eyes work overtime- gaze.

The- telling you lies by looking at you boldly and bored in the face- gaze.

The- we're shaking hands and saying hello because all possibilities are ours in this moment- gaze.

The- even though this success is yours tonight, I played my part by being in your life- gaze.

The- I'm smiling at you but my eyes are roaring for that other person across the room- gaze.

The- I'm staring at the fluorescence of my phone screen waiting for you to look away- gaze.

The- this's a screaming plea to you to learn my piece through desperate, tiny furrows in my forehead and practiced curves of my smile- gaze.

The- obvious knowledge of my beauty tonight earned me my right to look bored- gaze.

The- I have my family and tribe by my side and Loneliness checked out earlier- gaze.

The- these dark glasses let me stare at your body leisurely and inappropriately- gaze

The- that object of beauty you're all unavoidably sneaking glances at, is all mine- gaze.

The- this world seems more promising if my eyes stay slightly hooded- gaze.

The- I dare you to spot the outlines of the places I yearn for in my dilated pupils- gaze.

The- fallen from grace and gleefully rollicking in instant gratification tonight- gaze.

The- dull longing, exploring, wondering and wishing artfully hidden behind infinitely blank eyes- gaze.

                                                        
                           Picture credit: Here

A Story Always Contains 26 Letters.

                                                    Picture Credit: Here.

                                              

He sat turning the postcard around in his hand.

The matte surface of the picture felt cool against his thumb. Circling the surface distractedly, he hoped to trace a hidden message. Convinced that if he spent a minute longer weighing his decision he would amble into 'chick' territory, he scrawled

Hey,

I'm ok. Hope you're happy too

**
The old pub on South Bank must've been witness to it's fair share of confused lovers. They who'd sit with a pen in their hand, confusion tempered with enough bitterness in their hearts and a freshly brewed ale keeping their emotions fueled. What else could explain the wear and tear of the wooden table?
The scratch marks down it's surface, told more tales of anguish than of weathering due to age. Leave a man with a postcard, a pen, a drink on a wooden table and gashes on the table's surface would inevitably appear. Sometimes it was less horrific to carve out a message permanently than have it's intended recipient read it on paper, a thousand miles away.


This was his routine now.
Every weekend he would send her a postcard perfumed with noble intentions, hoping to explain himself. To communicate that he wasn't the obvious villain, he honestly didn't blame her for thinking he was.
That his flirtations had never been anything more than an anthropological experiment, all to prove his hypothesis that he still had game. That there was more to his decisions than a transparent fear of commitment and a painfully burning desire to explore more.
You couldn't say those things to your lover.
Not without her taking them very personally. Flinging a vase at you. Becoming deathly quiet. And then bursting into tears. All with a swiftness of transition only a woman could manage. He'd tried. He even had his friend rehearse the speech with him, but when he saw her sitting there, weathering under unanswered questions and stifled dreams, he hadn't known where to begin.

Baby, I know you're not happy.

That's when the flinging happened, and a muffled voice which seemed to be choking on it's own words said

I see where you're going with this. Don't bother.

Once again he believed her words. And didn't.

**
His ticket for London had been bought for the next month. And that's when the project took form and shape. One postcard a week. To wish her well. To reassure her that he wanted her to be happy, and to laugh that laugh which had once been in tune with eeny-meeny-miny-mo.
The words that came out were always different. Laboured, simplistic and never enough. Perhaps a lot like how he'd been towards the end.


A walk around the river always found him lingering outside his favourite souvenir shop. Laden with fridge magnets, the tired rack was mostly groaning and ready to collapse under the obvious irony. Behind the counter there were rows and rows of post cards. From aerial shots of the Buckingham Palace, tired views of red phone-booths, Trafalgar Square, the eye-sore that was London Eye and Parks.
He always picked one of the parks to send her. It was his way of letting her know that he'd come back and perhaps they could go on a picnic somewhere. Things would be perfect in that unreal moment and give them something to hold onto, to aspire to and to compare against when things got real and well, boring.

His friends wondered why he bothered with this exercise.

We have history, mate.

It was pretty simple. People do more for shared history than for anything else. To preserve it. To not have to start over. If starting over had a taste, it would be sharp, metallic and far too acidic. Shared history sat like melted chocolate on your tongue, you could chew it out and get tangled in it, eventually though it disappeared leaving an aftertaste that only water could wash away.

His postcard messages were always succinct. Clipped, if you may. He couldn't bother with poetry, despite knowing how much she ached for it. She'd once traced this, letter by letter, onto his bare back while he lay sleeping
“-Before leaving my room

i turn, and (stooping
through the morning) kiss
this pillow, dear
where our heads lived and were.”

He wanted to try for her today, outside the Tate. He wanted to go for something meaningful- but all he got was.

Hello.
The museums here are pretty cool. So, you doing alright?

That was his fourth and final draft and frankly it looked like that hot-dog cart would leave if he didn't get up quickly.

Stuffing the panoramic view of St. James Park in his back-pack, he made a run for it.

It tumbled into place. Falling clumsily on top of the postcard with the couple sunning themselves at Hyde Park, and five other such, including a now, slightly yellowing one of Greenwich Park. The edges of the postcard had curled against the leaves of the tree in the picture. His handwriting was smudged by errant drops from the Tabasco bottle which lay alongside Greenwich's best, and frankly only decent view.
There they lay. Forlorn. Waiting for absolution and postage stamps.

Us, In Italics

Dear Future You,

The Right Now You is sitting on the edge of the bed, completely engrossed in Top Gun. Haven't you seen this movie a million times before? I guess the thrill of Maverick's resurrection necessitates a re-watch. It's a hot night and you push the sheet aside, mumbling that Top Gun was essentially a chick flick and Die Hard is a true testosterone fest.

The crickets in the still of the night seem to agree with you.
Me? I'm rubbing body lotion into my legs with a vengeance. I'm young and so are you but together we've aged to a hundred, haven't we? Too bad there's no body-butter equivalent of retaining a relationship's earlier magic. But, I digress.

15 years from now seems like a lifetime. 
A lifetime which will be clumsily made up of weekends,bad work-days, good work-days, Mondays, the big moments that we seem to always be inching towards and a country's worth of different feelings.
I'm young and hopeful right now, which makes me terribly wise (Fitzgerald reference) and all this wisdom needs to be urgently written down. In case we chip these bone-china details.

Years from now when you read this letter you can remind me, that once upon a simpler time: I was happy to vegetate and watch sitcoms, I compulsively competed at every game (perhaps this was Metaphorical Sign #1?) and I adored you with as much dignity as an in-love 19 year old could manage. You know? Dignity hastily fashioned as a skirt and vehement prints of pride worn as a jacket, all too poorly concealing a dumb-ass heart. I was a proud, arrogant fool completely blind to my own condition. The very worst kind.

You were happy and laughed that uninhibited laugh. It was like a milkshake, thick and curdling with deep, nutty undertones. A laugh I spent precious moments trying desperately to earmark as my property. Perhaps, if I made a blanket fort and covered you in it while you laughed, it would stop the world and those-with-lesser-laughs from hearing it? Consumed with growing older, you were always impressing upon me the sense of responsibility you shouldered, all because you had a 6 year head start in The Business of The World. Perhaps, this was Self-fulfilling Prophecy #1.

You were always too cocky and sure of how you didn't need a 'chick's' moisturizer, “a man's skin just took care of itself”. Your vanity managed to almost decimate the common sense and general know-how I'd acquired from beauty magazines all these years.

I was always stingy while sharing my music, wasn't I? Even worse with books. Especially my worn out, thumbed copies. There was no sense behind my need to own, but there it was anyway. Not everyone could know about my music or my very favourite books. You never understood why.

It was because I was a sum of these parts: those albums and disjointed sentences hidden inside these books was what made me and sharing them would be too intimate. My greatest ode to an author would be to love him so much that I would fervently wish no one ever read him. It was fortuitous then, that none of my good friends were authors.

No one who saw us would assume we'd get along. You were calculations and numbers and I was sighing at how much fun whispering the word “whimsy” was. We made a common Universe along the way, habituated only by Messrs You & I. We made fun of the same people, mostly for the same reasons. After a certain point our fights sounded identical, we could easily speak for the other person. We were deliciously stubborn in our own ways.

It's little wonder then that we didn't work out. I kept trying to hold you inside my blanket fort and you were sharing excerpts from my books with every new friend you made. But for a single, solid moment, we owned the Universe and all that it contained.

You were watching Top Gun and I was rubbing moisturiser into my legs.

Photo Credit: Here

Moms are Boss. And Other Life Lessons

As a 20 something, having a life changing event entitles you to share your wisdom with your other, sometimes clueless counterparts. Fools learn from their own experiences, the wise, cool cats learn from other people's blog posts.

Last week, my mother had a health scare which stopped us, shocked us and made us revaluate. This is what I learnt

1. Say Thank You- I was going with Early to Bed, Early to Rise, but this one was more contextual. We're really, really blessed in ways that our selfish, narcissistic lives sometimes overlook. It's easy to be flippant and overlook basic outlines of our lives- like limbs, families and hearts- but every now and then, we should stop where we are, crank up the volume and go bat-shit crazy to I feel good. Try doing this outside the shower, it looks less dodgy.

2. You have a lot of friends- The worst way to find out how popular you are, is to have a crisis.

Here's what your anthropological findings may look like- you have a friend who will show up everyday with odd care packages and absolutely nothing to say. She will giggle inappropriately and incessantly, her ears will turn red and you will have to take time out to ease her awkwardness. This will be the oddest yet most effective way you will be comforted. There is the other friend who despite getting killed at work, will show up, only to make fun of your clothes, and say inappropriate things loudly. Case in point: "I'm so thankful this hospital looks like a hotel, it truly makes me feel better. Imagine if it looked like a real hospital."
An old University room mate will send you an email from half way across the world. The girl you grew up with, will insist on you sending her screen shots of every diagnosis and report. This is so she can describe what exactly happened and assure you, that had you been in New York, care would have been much the same.

The much loved Friend's fiancee and Friend will entertain your parents while you try to catch up on sleep at home. Your boss will offer you the potent care package of cupcakes, vodka and her cat (what else are care packages made of?). Your room mate will assume the role of a parent, all the way from London and incessantly send military texts like "status"/ "food??". This text will be sent three times a day, until a satisfactory answer is received. And then there is your childhood friend, who will leave her case (due at court), abandon her boss and shadow you until the day ends. She will also  have left you wise emails, just in case you decide to troll the internet unsupervised.

Amidst this overwhelming love and support, one question will worry you every now and then-
If I am so popular, why am I not invited to more parties ?

3. Reserve judgment-  Most of us are completely unprepared for adult life situations. When faced with a crisis, we're bad versions of Whose line is it anyway?. At no point will you anticipate your next move. Grief, fear, anger will look different on every one. Some choose to deflect, some avoid, some wallow, some grow their hair out and some just really eat a lot of dessert. Just show up; being a rock is the most underrated grand gesture if there ever was one. Be a rock and don't judge. If a reaction doesn't look, like you thought it would, doesn't make it less real or deserving of care. Chances are your friend/family are only looking to lean on you. Be kind, who knows you might turn out to be the crazy person who denies themselves oral hygiene as an expression of grief? Oh, and always carry Altoids.

4.Find a joke in a hopeless place. Laugh- I suspect you're rolling your eyes at how generic this list turned out. That's alright, I'm trying to type while sticking my tongue out at you.
In the all consuming largeness of everything, you need to take a moment to laugh. For me, there was something ironically soothing to the microcosm of a stress pimple. You could juxtapose it to the larger situation, or you could write bad poetry. My submission:

An Ode to a Zit
You sit across my barren cheek,
Spitefully, making me resemble a freak.
You softly remind of the Good & Greater
Dear Spot, you're almost a freakin' crater.

This rhyme is a doozy and honestly dead
But I'm really thankful, you're not on my forehead.

5. Mummies are Boss- Of all the people, in all of the world, there's no one like your mom (I wanted to use 'my' instead of 'your' here, but I realize this makes it more relatable). She made you her profession, and I'm guessing you're slouched in front of a computer somewhere. Sit up straight, get off the phone, pull up your jeans and go spend time with her. Take her out, show her off, smother her in affection if you must.
Of course, trying to blog while balancing a computer on her stomach (as she rests) may not convey the sentiment very well.

(Photo Credit: Here. Also, how adorable?)