in search (contd)

The noodle looked about, gazing carefully over the rim of his spectacles, taking in the room with a slow sweep. Ice clinked in the glass he held in his bony hand. It was the only sound in the pin-drop silence that blanketed the room.

“What would we do?” Jack of Hearts broke the silence with an anxious question.

The potato shifted on the couch impudently “I am not part of a book! I cannot be.”

The blanket of silence took over once more till they heard muffled noises in the living room outside. At the sounds Clock’s hands moved frantically all over his face. The Lady fingers squeaked and the noodle smiled.

***

“I do not understand”, the woman shook her head. “I do not understand what it is you’re saying.

The man, propped up near the fireside on a couch with numerous blankets ensconcing him in a cozy warmth, was moving his lips. However the woman could not hear anything. She shook her head once again and moved in closer to catch what the man was muttering.

“I need to get away…from here. I have to go – anywhere. Please…” and the frail voice glimmered silent once again.

When the woman drew away and looked up at his face it was composed in peaceful lines. His breath had become steady. He had slept off.

A sudden wave of concentrated confusion and panic swept across the woman’s face as she gazed at the inert, comfortable form. Getting up she started to pace up and down her small living room. One of her cats – the white Persian beauty – sniffed around the couch, gracefully jumped up on it, gathered herself around the man’s leg and settled in for a nap too.

***

Looking out the window, the Spoon gasped.

It was snowing outside.

“It never snows so much here!”, the Spoon sputtered the words out.

The two Ladyfingers inched closer to see what the Spoon was sputtering about. One of them turned more green while the other look drained of color.

It was snowing in thick sheets. Soft flakes falling down in such thick stillness, it looked like feathery blanket after blanket silently hastening to cover them under a shroud of white.

“we will get buried under the snow in a few hours” one greener Ladyfinger whispered

“…if it keeps snowing like this” the paler one completed the whisper.

The noodle smiled nonchalantly. “Wait till you see what happens.”

Ice continued to clink as the snow outside gathered silently around their cozy home.

Torque

Engine revs up, an expectant murmur, alert for the command. Famished rubber tyres squeal, avidly licking the slick road. My baby fires me up on winding highways:a hustler snaking through inefficient truckloads of material wealth.

I am becoming reckless.

Nowadays I open the door of my car, slide in, hold the staring wheel and look straight ahead – my stomach tightens. I see myself from outside, standing at a corner, inert; silently gazing at myself getting into the car. Settling into the seat and looking ahead, my stomach tightens. Death gazes at my face with luscious curiosity as I stare through the innocent, transparent windshield.

It’s like I’ve sprouted another self, the very devil. Cautious and controlled – at home and work. But in the car, behind the wheel its a different story. I am a different me.

Dizzying speed briskly patterns a round of sly roads polished at even times in the evenings. The orange ball stuck in the sky plays a desperate hide-and-seek before painting the road a bloody red; tempting to exhaust my baby in a rain of raw frothy luminosity.

Isn’t it amazing – the way Death looks? It has a divine spark of life to it. Yes, you may say I am being ironic. But T S Eliot knew exactly what I am talking about.

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”

The sterile car, waiting for me, is where I start from. The end, Death tells me, is merely a beginning. And then Death smiles. The coldest of all warm smiles. Slight in the beginning, the smile gains pace, in tandem with the increasing speed of my car.

Mephistopheles’s tongue – the road looks like at sunset. A gigantic, polished tongue. With an effervescent mouth yawning, exposing a rainbow of water colors splashed about like modern art.

At 120 km/hr, when the world flies by in a blur of motion, Death is a cold smiling column of crimson light stretching in front of me.

Scattered bits of sound whooshed past her ears. A murmuring hum whirling about. She did not know whether it was the world or her. Who fled from the other.

And I am becoming reckless.

The moment I start slowing down that divine smile ebbs away from me. You see, I don’t want it to leave. I want it to bathe me in its iridescent flakes, to cocoon me in its wake.

Whirling about the pool from which shot out the escaping route of speed, she splashed in her confusion. Splashed and thirstily guzzled the speed: hungry with desire, desirous of hunger.

Every time I take the wheel – Death jumps from my core and takes to me as cozily as my body to the car seat. And I cling right back to it. Not a single moment has passed by from that time, not far away in the faded past, wherein Death hasn’t divinely smiled down at me.

I am becoming reckless because I’m beginning to enjoy it.

The game.

odds and ends

cigarette butts
swimming in front of
bloodshot eyes,
tired with too much
of everything.

ash strewn
on hair, askew
remnants of fire,
floating gently
in front of her eyes.

Strange:
how a stranger
reads bits of your
life – spread like
cheese on bread -
a quick bite
in the mornings,
small snacks
in the evenings.

Strangers:
flowing around
screens -
kindred lotuses
sprouting in the same muck.

discovering yet another way
of reaching out
while reaching within.

on a rainy night

glasses:

overflowing
with bubbling rawness
of fluttering fingers.

silhouettes:

tracing a
dark dance of
nimble limbs.

fumbling clinking of
thirsty fragility:
irregular bursts of
music.

dangling distances
of drooling glasses
stifle slowly:

ardent for raw rolling
on shards of
sharp unruly chinks.

dreams:

shattered on the floor
rubbing feet raw,
dribbling down from
bubbling glasses
overflowing with a pain too
pleasurable.