A Case of Forbidden Something

 

I like to think of you as a basket of starlight lilies. Sure, it is not the most beautiful flower that blooms prettily for her admirers. But so are you, with your half-scathing words that are lathered in sarcasm and served on a platter to fool the rest of the world.

I like to think of you as two hands holding when the sun is not looking at them anymore. I like to think of you, as the warmth that is enclosed in between those embracing palms, remains like the remnant of a story left unspoken. They are not sweat-kissed anymore, not like they were last afternoon when they laid, conjoined, each line, with its separate destination, congruent to the other, as if right there, in that very moment, they whispered to their destinies, fuck you.

I like to think of you as something akin to the bite-marks on my lower lip, the ones that I spend a lifetime giving to myself, when I catch you looking at me, as I try to look away, only hopelessly gazing at you once again.

What would they say? What would they say if they ever read my eyes, peeped into my thoughts, turned a blade through my heart and bled out its secrets?

Will they be ashamed?

Or more importantly, would you be ashamed?

I like to think of you as the interludes between Madonna serenading to some bearded Mexican fellow to ‘La Isla Bonita’, when those unknown instruments go tip-tap-tipper-tapper to the tone of something tangibly untouchable.

I like to think of you as someone I have touched, in some forgotten dream, perhaps in another lifetime, and now, I am just a ghost, retracing those old roads, hoping they would lead me to you. Who knows? Perhaps we will meet somewhere in between and lie to each other, saying they were crossroads, before walking away.

I like to think of you as a forbidden fruit, one that I have already tasted. But the gods were cruel. Their punishment was to make me forget how you did taste in the space between my lips and teeth, the warmth that I must have felt when the droplets of you trickled down onto the flesh below my teeth, warming my mouth, warming whatever was left of my soul.

I like to think of you as the secrets friends share when even the moon hides in the night. I like to think of as those secrets that the stars steal away from them, when those shining tricksters peep out of their cloudy caverns to listen to their words.

And I would keep counting, counting endlessly, until I remember all that I think of you, until you remember that maybe, just maybe, I like you to think of me too.

Go Make a Home for Yourself Today

A wise woman once said, ‘Even being alone, it’s better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely,’ and I wouldn’t have discovered her words later in life, wouldn’t have been none the wiser if I hadn’t walked out of my home that day and watched a movie alone, forever igniting my passion for watching films by my lonesome.

On a drizzling day of February 2012, when the lovers strode past me, huddled in each others’ arms, towards the theaters, I had taken my cynical self for a movie, something that I would laugh about in the coming years, thinking how I had specifically used the term—“Dating Myself”—to describe that incident in future dinner-table conversations.

I had been bitter, and chewing the corner of lips, as is my habit and that of the characters that I end up writing about. Cursing every last of these oblivious fools, for they were oblivious to life and her many woes, for they were oblivious to the incumbent sadness of never really belonging anywhere.

Because I had never belonged to anyone, especially not to myself.

After all, even my self was just as temperamental as I was. When I tried to woo her, she had made it abundantly clear that she needed to be courted, loved, adored, and given a sense of belonging before she would let her secrets be known.

And so, when all hope was almost lost, I had taken my self to a date.

I had got myself a bucket of the most cheese-infused popcorn, not to mention the overpriced glass of Coca Cola.

Now that I think about it, I don’t remember the name of the movie I had watched that day. I am sure it must been something absolutely horrendous. But I do remember that I had decided to “date” myself on Valentine’s Day ‘12, as is the cliche of every stubborn heart in the world.

The results had been horrible—I had cried buckets over some character dying, I had spilled Coke on my new tee shirt, and I had wasted almost half a bucket of those tasteless abominations when I tried to get up from my seat at the end of the movie.

Soaked and poorer by five hundred bucks, I had returned home from the disaster, promising myself that I shall never let myself be tortured in this way.

Suffice to say, I never really kept my word.

As the years passed by, I befriended myself. And in turn, she showed me my loneliness could be turned into something akin to a pleasant solitude. She gave me words, filled me up with characters from books and movies, and strung up the emptiness of my otherwise silent world with music, even if I was quite disinclined towards the new addition.

Inside us is another person, another self that is waiting for you to only ask, just ask, to show themselves. And believe me, even if you drag them through the worst movie dates, the most tasteless of dinners, and even the worst of heartbreaks of your life, they will never abandon you. They will never say goodbye.

I see myself, I see her and I saw the empty unfurnished room inside my soul that had existed before she welcomed me in. It was a greyscale box of nothingness, with no heart and no memory to treasure in the darkest of times.

And together, we had colored it, painted it with a thousand more colors that the spectrum still hides from our eyes. We had furnished it with love, hope, even our sorrows, and our most secret of memories.

Sure, there were heartbreaks after. My self and I found ourselves decorating our home for guests who wouldn’t stay long enough to call themselves family. That they would sometimes leave with a piece of our furniture, stealing our memories, our hopes, perhaps even our belief that we could love again. And sometimes they would be kind, kind enough to leave a piece of themselves for our safekeeping, a memory, a memento of a scent, a voice, or a phantom touch. And she and I, we would caress it, keep it safe, locked inside the most secure corners of our room until they came to claim it again.

But for you to see all of this, you would have to know yourself first.

Know how beautiful, how wonderfully, heartbreakingly priceless you are.

I found that when I had taken myself to see some film in a lovelorn theater.

Perhaps you would find yourself in the midst of words, or perhaps in the unread corner of a storybook, or even in the melody between choruses of a song.

Who knows?

But that is your story to discover.

So find yourself.

And love yourself.

After all, you are your soulmate.

Hold onto yourself when the storms rage, when the sea seduces you to leave out the rest, when the mountains call you to leap forth, when life whispers your last goodbye.

Hold on, because your strong and fragile heart needs you.

Hold on, because that soul is yours to keep, to protect, and to cherish until it is time to depart, together.

Just hold on.

Chester Bennington: A Childhood Memorabilia

I was fifteen when the first barrage of adolescent rebellion swarmed my homestead, me as the nexus of course. Suddenly, my vision cleared overnight and I had convinced myself that I was surrounded by ordinary filth that would choke me to death if I didn’t run away now. That I had to be different somehow if I had any chance of survival.

So, armed with a copy of The Outsider, and feeling quite confident, might I add, I set off for school. But as every hero of any story, I needed my personal playlist for vanquishing all evil. Unfortunately, I have been quite musically disinclined all my life. And even now, as I remember the awkward dates where I have been asked what kind of music I listen to, I still cringe, thinking about the side-way glances I would give towards the café door and calculate how fast I could run for my life.

But at sixteen, one of my classmates saved me instead. I remember there were incessant rehearsals for a certain play that school year, and happily obliged to bunk classes, I tucked myself away into corners while one ear always collected pieces of conversations from the popular womenfolk.

One such name regarding music was Chester Bennington. At sixteen, and absolutely unaware about the world, I had no idea who this man was, except that he sang in some band called Linkin Park. So when they turned their glares at me, my mouth decided to have a mind of its own and say I listened to Chester as well. And seeing the magical change of their expressions, I doused myself some more in my lies, borrowing information from broken conversations and piecing them together with phrases like “Hybrid Theory”, “Numb”, and “In the End”. Suddenly, a stranger named Chester had metamorphosed the mousy awkward nerd in the corner into an attractive introverted intellectual who spent her days amidst tasteful books and music. And still I had no idea who he was.

That was until I decided to end my hypocrisy and actually listen to “Numb”. The first time I had heard the song, I admit, I understood nothing. I was absolutely impaired to comprehend American accents, and an American accent with music was my personal brand of nightmare. I remember I had felt there was a lot of misplaced anger, impotent angst and a lot of screaming. And whenever the chorus came, I would start “singing” those incoherent words too. Finally, Google saved the day and when I actually found out the lyrics of the song, the clarity was exhilarating.

Can’t you see that you’re smothering me?

Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control

‘Cause everything that you thought I would be

Has fallen apart right in front of you.

And suddenly, these four lines were everywhere, from the last pages of my notebooks to the blackboards of empty classrooms.

Chester Bennington didn’t save my life, far from it. Perhaps at sixteen, it wasn’t required to be saved just yet. But he did fill me in with words, words that I didn’t know I needed until that day when I was dawdling in some lonesome corner.

As the years flew by, “Numb” paved the way for “In the End”, which led to “Shadow of the Day” and “Castle of Glass”, all thanks to the randomness of YouTube. And most of the times, I admit I couldn’t understand a word until I pulled up the lyrics from some shoddy website. Yet, for the first time, it seemed that words could make a home for melody, and there I could be, in something akin to a shelter.

Chester was a doorway, a doorway to a world far greater than I could imagine in my wildest dreams. And although he led me to many a tragic figure in the music industry, from Cobain to Mercury, I never forgot my first friend. He was, and always will be, a memorabilia of a childhood lost, and half-remembered in the sweetest dreams.

And perhaps, just perhaps, something lets us step into a haven of surrealism amidst our realities. How else can I explain that after spending half a decade of not listening to Linkin Park, I find the news of Chester’s death on the night YouTube decides to play “Burn It Down” one last time? As if my old friend was still here, still blaring from my speakers, and the whole world was lying to me.

I didn’t shed a tear for you, Chester.

There was nothing left to cry for anyway.

Because you see, I am strong. I am a strong woman who bites her lips to stop herself from crying beside her favorite aunt’s deathbed. Because crying is for the weak. And I have long since promised I would be strong, I would survive.

Even if I forgot to laugh, sing and live along the way.

Or maybe, just maybe, I have remembered all my sadness and frustration, and finally let it go.

Maybe that was what you always wanted.

Maybe that was what I always sought.

But then again, in the end, it doesn’t even matter.

Why We and the Seven Kingdoms Deserve Better than Daenerys Targaryen

As I sit typing this post at my favorite café in the city, I flinch. I flinch, because someone might peep onto my laptop monitor and see what I am typing, thus engaging me into another raging battle regarding this, and this is a gross understatement, controversial subject.

I started watching Game of Thrones when it first released, and greasing my vanity, I confess I am quite the “Thronie” myself. However, as the seasons passed, and the characters metamorphosed to personify certain ideologies, I found myself dissecting, re-educating myself and understanding them on a new spectrum, particularly Daenerys Targaryen.

Believe me, the Dragon Queen was my favorite character in the beginning of the series. Here was a brave lady who battled and won against all odds to inundate into several million minds her identity on a mainstream multimedia. Here was a character, a female, to look up to. Or I was almost misled into believing.

I won’t go into the summary of her character arc. With the millions of dedicated followers around the world, every one of us is quite well-versed over her journey from a simple girl who is confused about the world around her to becoming the Mother of Dragons.

But as the years have passed, I have observed a strange obsession of glorifying, even attaching a divine aura, to dear old Dany. It all started with her conquering Meereen and becoming Myssa. But that is also the defining factor: Dany is a marvelous conqueror. She has dragons; she can intimidate any lord into subjugation. But at the same time, Dany is a horrible ruler/administrator.

Granted she is young and has much to learn, however, even learning stems out of the simple threads of humility and a desire to actually learn from another. Sadly, she has none of the two. Our Khaleesi has zero military prowess, no administrative knowledge and broad-shoulders her council into getting her way. Why? Because that is her claim; because she is meant to rule the Seven Kingdoms, or so she believes.

George R. R. Martin created a world, a reality that you cannot escape into, but rather have to force the gates open and let it invite you in. Westeros is a land of survival, where a sword cannot be your only weapon. And our Dany knows nothing about Westeros (you would almost believe our favorite bastard is a scholar in comparison), neither its culture, nor its norms, nor its militia, and definitely not its people.

You can of course refute at this point that she has been a foreigner to her homeland all her life. But when she has a council comprising of the greats such as Barristan Selmy, and later, Tyrion Lannister himself, and a virtually endless amount of possibilities in the form of wealth (she is a queen, after all), she could have tried to read, understand, inculcate the workings of her homeland, her grand goal; thus making me question the cause of such ignorance.

Her ignorance, however, leads us to our next problem. Dany lacks empathy. She is a strong woman, a survivalist to the core, but she is unable to place herself into the shoes of another and understand any situation from another perspective. Be it the hierarchy established for centuries in Meereen through slavery to the handling of administrative duties, Dany has been a thorough-bred absolutist in every situation. This doesn’t mean I personally condone slavery, however, as a ruler, it had been her responsibility to understand the social and economical pyramid on which her newly conquered city stood. Removing a single block out of that would inevitably result to the falling of the entire civilization. What is the solution then? Knowledge, as Petyr Baelish once said, is power. When you remove a block, you must substitute it with another, that is, if you want your world to not fall into oblivion. That is what Dany forgot, therefore, causing the irreversible chaos that still rages amuck in Meereen.

And when wrecking havoc in one city was not enough, she let her eyes on an entire civilization on the other side of the Narrow Sea. Westeros is a corrupted world, and if you dig deeper, far worse hells will be visible than slavery itself. And as she sails across the sea to reach the shores of Dragonstone, Dany comes armed with three dragons, who, mind you, are uncontrollable, wild, voracious and are capable of leaving a trail of fire on their wake. And alongside that, let us not forget the Dothrakis.

The Dothrakis are a plundering tribe, they take what they deem theirs and move around the lands as a nomadic hoard, leaving death, rape and pillaging at their wake. Bringing thousands of such individuals on the shores of the Seven Kingdoms, a land already drenched in chaos (mind you), would lead to an irreversible path of destruction for the commonfolk and livestock, none of which can be blamed on our beloved Khaleesi, of course.

And yet, as Season 7 begins, we sit here, dazzled by her silver main and golden stride, hoping she would be the great savior that Westeros deserves, but probably doesn’t need at this point, or the next decade in the least.

However, let us leave the Seven Kingdoms to their devices for now. For all we know, Benioff and Weiss might just decide to let everyone be killed or eaten (probably not in that order either) by the White Walkers when the plots lead to a course of nowhere. Now that would be quite the nod to dear old Kafka.

Dany is perhaps the most celebrated character in Game of Thrones, maybe even in the past decade of English television. Her actions, her words, everything has had consequences around the world. From thousands of tee shirts proclaiming “I am not a princess, I am a Khaleesi”, to “I have Dragons”, Dany has seeped into pop culture like paint on water.

Thousands of females idolize her, thousands of male fantasize her. She reigns supreme on most minds, either hated, or loved, but never ignored. Her very presence is a milieu of grand entrances, majestic music compositions and so on and so forth.

Dany has thus become a phenomenon, and inevitably, the newest face of feminism. And this realization petrifies me. Young girls, inspired by the Targaryen Queen, are growing up in an age where they are learning that intimidating others, bullying others, watching them cower into subjugation are the new methods of victory, of getting one’s way/point across. They see stars as they see petite Dany conquer cities with a flair of her skirts, or more frequently, undoing them instead. They learn that knowledge is not the weapon of choice in the quest to resolve the issues in the world, but dragons/weapons instead. Wisdom sadly has taken quite the backseat while bullying grapples the crown instead. Peace, words, are nothing, intimidation is the newest ideology.

And with the world almost slipping into the very pits of chaos that Varys has long since been afraid of, that is a really scary realization.

Yet, all hope is not lost, even if old man George would try and convince us otherwise in every other chapter/episode. And here’s to blatantly, and rather childishly, hoping that some benevolent hero shall soon rise in the Game of Thrones universe and show that kindness is the most powerful weapon there ever was.

For lands were meant to be ruled with a strict but gentle hand, and people are to be loved, not conquered and considered as livestock that can be coerced into changing colors with every alteration of a house flag in some castle.

The Library or the Prince?

The first time Woody Allen realized he was different was when the boys in his kindergarten fell for Snow White and he found himself infatuated with the Evil Queen.

I never found that strong a calling, but when I was five, still crying buckets over Mufasa dying, I found myself conflicted between choosing the library or the prince in Beauty and the Beast.

I assure you, I was no reader back then. I honestly started reading seriously when I was twelve. Before that, I found reading to be a lonely exercise, a wasted one too. I would rather have had my feet strongly settled upon the hardness of reality than let myself be swayed into fantastical lands with gentle beasts and cruel humans.

My tale of reading is just as common as every other Bengali in this city. With my father taking me to the Kolkata International Book Fair, and asking me what I would like to read. Considering myself different from the dreamy and delusional girls in my class, I had picked up Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, because, hell, what could be realer than a murder in a ship?

But the first seeds of my love for words germinated in the heart of an enormous animated library, when the Beast had taken Belle to a world of books. The sheer magnanimity, and perhaps the majesty too, had blown me to bits until I found myself muddled in another object of affection—the Beast himself.

For a five-year-old, the world was still colored in only black or white. There weren’t grey complications in between. Lions were gentle majestic beasts, not conniving and incestuous, and wolves were bloodthirsty, cruel creatures that ambushed Belle and the Beast in packs, instead of waiting for winter.

Life was simpler, fantasy, simpler still. Before fiction, came non-fiction, or rather, studying people with the gods they worshipped, ergo, Greek and Egyptian myths (thanks to Brendan Fraser being my swashbuckling hero).

But that story shall be retold later. For now, I need to face the dilemma that has confounded me for the last decade or so: Will I choose the library or the prince?

I have always prided myself as a realist, someone who is calculative of all the steps she takes, and even though the world may see me as a impulsive creature, perhaps I too have used that as a layer of my being, portraying the person I wished for them to see.

Perhaps I complicated my stories myself; even before all hell actually broke loose.

If you ask me now, I would choose the library in a heartbeat. I would spend hours, watch them turn into days, months, and years, until I could infuse myself with the endless wealth of knowledge that library must have had. I still romanticize a certain motion, a montage of fantasy really, of me seating on a regal antique chair, books scattered around me on a mahogany table, while candles light up the words. I see the wax melt and smile, counting the hours I have spent trying to lessen the distance between me and the words on paper.

And perhaps that is all it is—a fantasy of a child of five that grows more details by the day.

But it is still the most beautiful one I have till date.

And like every other self-serving intellectual, I have studied, dissected and interpreted my fantasy in a hundred other ways. My chair symbolizes my need for stability, the table a symbol of my raised stature, and the scattered books show my thirst of knowledge. Finally, the trickling wax of the candles shows that I am always, always, running out of time.

It has always been a race really. Now that I think about, when did I ever remember to breathe?

But my little fantasy has its secrets too, conniving little secrets that shove me into my decade-long dilemma.

In that little montage, somewhere far off from reality, as I spend my hours reading, lost in the world of words, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I presume I will be scared by the sudden interruption, but I am not. I smile, and when I turn, I see the Beast. Mind you, never the prince. I see the Beast instead.

And I don’t mind as I usually do in my reality, I don’t mind being interrupted from my reading. I am not even a little miffed. A part of me realizes that I welcome this interruption.

And that is also when I know it is fantasy.

But our fantasies, our dreams, the books we read, the words we choose to convey our thoughts, all of these are our mirrors. Only through them can we actually see the kind of souls we really are.

So, perhaps I do want the candle-wax to trickle away, reminding me of my mortality. Only, if only, in the end, someone would interrupt me, take me away from my books, even for the spell of a moment.

Belle fell for the Beast, so did I. And maybe that was why I could never stand the thought of him turning into Adam in the end. I didn’t want a beautiful prince, not when I was five, not when I am twenty-three. I wanted a flawed being, a human who perhaps didn’t bathe in his blemishes but was accepting of them, maybe of mine too. He wasn’t supposed to be a god, not even a humble one, but just that, a beast. Someone who has his scars, his regrets, his sins, his cynicisms, his cruelty, and underneath all of it, his humanity.

The Beast embodied all the souls I have loved, unearthed, seen, and still embraced. Be it seventeen, or twenty, I have found myself falling for the dark spots, the grey limbo, the uncharted waters, and the forbidden fruits. And not for a moment, did it make me want to run back to the prince, to the perfection. I was happy in my misery, I was in peace in my chaos.

So, perhaps the real dilemma never really lies between choosing the library or the prince.

Perhaps it only exists between the audacious hopes of finding a beast with my destined library, and the knowledge that I shall never have it all.

But, c’est la vie, mon ami. After all, it is all about the journey, the trickling candle-wax, and humming while reading secret stories.

All I can do is keep repeating Doris’s words in a litany, wishing someday, in some place between fantasy and reality, I will collide into a Stradivarius that still plays the tunes of Tale as Old as Time.

More Than a Need

When I was seventeen, something cracked inside.

And seven years since, my story holds no context, no gift.

Only a tidal wave that had once wrecked my shores,

Wrecked my shores enough to make you a forbidden shelter.

Because only when I was really broken, did I see what my shattered bits, what I looked like.

I am a concoction, of steel and love and hope and anger.

Of faith and belief, and my edges are sewed tightly by the ribbons of doubt.

I am made of secrets, sometimes they leak through my skin, break free into the air, and recollect into forgotten old pieces, until those remnants spill out through words.

Sometimes, I would make a home for those words on these blank sheets,

And sometimes, they would only persist through a strike through, or a caricature made over them with ink, so as to hide who I really am.

Who am I then?

A woman who hides herself, craving to dissociate herself enough to spill forth out of the pandemonium called my mind?

Maybe, I will never know.

Perhaps these scribbles mean nothing.

Maybe I am searching solutions of a puzzle that will forever be unsolvable.

But then again, even then, the hope sewn inside craves to find one, to find an answer.

I love madly, dearly, passionately, nonchalantly and impersonally.

I love with my skin and bones.

I love through my sinews and blood, until I am a frothing mess of words and fear.

I love, just the same.

Memories lament inside,

In search of the next person they would reveal themselves to.

I fight them once a while, hoping to feel something more than an ordinary human.

Hoping if I kept them caged long enough, they would see me as a mystique, a woman of secrets and longing.

And sometimes, I let the spillage only make me something close to ordinary.

And close to ordinary I shall always be.

I am chaos, after all.

Unchained in your symmetry, roving between the spaces of your mind and soul, sometimes intruding in your dreamlands, begging for home.

I would come as a destitute at times,

Wishing you would give me shelter from the storms.

And in some nights, I become the storm instead.

Perhaps tonight is such a story,

Or perhaps the next night.

But the truth is, I shall be there, waiting, biding my time,

Until you collide into me, memory, dream and reality a clusterfuck of longing,

And beg me to light up your world with my darkness.

And only then, and only then,

Shall I find you, kiss your flaws, and free you of your lonesomeness.

So wait for me until then,

Draw me in your mind,

Color me with your soul,

Dabble the corner of my lips that still bleeds,

And wait, oh wait,

Until I am something more than you just need.

 

Please, Not Seventeen Anymore

I knew I was old when Daddy didn’t come to braid my hair and tell me stories anymore.

Sometimes I want to be twelve again.

I don’t want my chest to feel heavy, my spine to ache with the weight of my bosom.

I don’t want to feel dirty when a man brushes across me in the busy streets of my city, his elbow touching the edge of my breasts.

I don’t want to keep scrubbing my nipples underneath the shower, my tears blinding me, hoping this water would brush away that touch, that filth of unwanted warmth off my skin.

I wish, oh I fucking wish.

I don’t want to be seventeen anymore.

I want to wake up, still praying to be seventeen on my twelfth birthday, my father braiding my hair.

I don’t want to feel like his mouth still persists on me after he has kissed my cheek.

I don’t want to flinch when someone wishes to hold my hand, to touch me.

I want to wake up, and forget my dreams.

I want to wake up, stop dreaming anymore.

My Daddy stopped braiding my hair when I was seventeen and I shivered when he touched my curls.

He told me I was a woman grown, and now I needed only to touch myself, and no one else.

I was a woman grown, a dirty thing, a filthy thing, a glorious thing?

I am seventeen and I am nothing more than a rant, a word, a hope, a joke.

I am my hair, my skin, my breasts, my cunt, myself and still not me.

I am my heart, my lungs, my dreams, my soul and never again anything that used to be me.

I am a woman, I am a female, I am a goddess, I am a whore, I am a mother, but then again, could I be so much more?

I am the universe,

And I am just an atom.

I am starlight,

And I am also the street light whose shadow you find to take a piss.

I am me,

And I am nothing, everything, something, anything.

I am me, you, but not that seventeen-year-old.

I am fallen leaves, rotting flowers strewn upon puddles, and the cracked barks of trees.

I am the last colors of a forgotten rainbow, the scent of jasmine, and the taste of the first plum you bite into.

I am the first steaming sip of hot chocolate, and the last kiss goodnight on a wintry evening.

I am the rain, hail, sleet and snow, I am soggy letters, and smudged secrets.

I am everything, but not that seventeen-year-old.

I am a child, I am a woman, but I promise, oh I fucking promise you, I am still so much more.