THAT PRICK, LOVE.

Well, who knows how love will come to you? It may knock you down flat or it may pick you up from the rut. Whatever it is, you better pull it home by the collar because that prick is hard to come by.

There will be times when you’ll be driven hopping mad by the all-consuming feeling. You’ll have it breathing down your neck like a giant as if that thing only survives on your misery. You’ll look for ways to run away, just disappear like it never happened; like your eyes never met, like you never once touched. Sometimes it will make you want to crush it to death with your very hands and make a bloody monster out of the non-suspect living thing that is you. You will wonder about the when and how of it while it eats you up from within and all that is left of you is love.

Then there will be the other times when it renders you a scrounger for every little bit of it that you can get your unworthy hands on and fill your empty being with. You’ll want to pack it up in a bottle that never opens and carry it with you with every breath and yet it will slip right through your wanting fingers like it never was yours to keep in the first place.

It will make you do strange things. You’ll cry. A lot. You will also smile for no bloody reason. A lot. You will fight and fight till you lose because you will never win. You cannot. You will rip each other apart and dissatisfy. You will avenge by throwing it at the backseat and drive through your non-descript existential commute, all the time hoping it escapes or vanishes or just plainly dies while you drive through the mundane of life. Eventually you will tranquilize thinking that there was once some love in your life which you fought well and killed. You will feel triumphant that all that you are now left to live with are your successes and failures, your acquisitions and mergers, your revenge and compromise. That’s good, right? These are simple things, they don’t complicate the person you have made out of yourself. They are convenient things and they bring the discipline you need to stay dull.

What do you care for love? That thing drove you crazy! It made you make mistakes and love it. It made you strong enough to defy the lines between right and wrong. It made you forget deadlines. And most of all, it did horrible things to your ego.

You fell to your knees and begged, you jumped walls and boundaries, you laughed like a child and cried like a mother, you actually felt lonely when you weren’t even alone. It made your nights warm and sweaty and your days cold and ordinary. It made you audacious and want more than you thought you should have or deserve. What can I say, it made a colossal fool out of you. That was love.

It also slept beside you and hugged you breathless when you thought you’ve hit rock bottom. Just when you thought this world has broken you in so many ways that even you didn’t shy away from trampling all over yourself, it resuscitated you back into the person you are. When you were mean and hard, it managed to reach somewhere within you and touched where you are most forgiving. In the jagged humidity of life and its demands, you could still fall asleep like a baby after a lifetime of insomnia. You smelt it and you breathed again, you felt it and you lived again. You loved. You fell in love. Keep it. This I must say, that prick is hard to come by.   

THE BARBIE DOLL COMPLEX

Sitting in front of a quiet stream indolently passing through a green grove, uncaring and lucid, at times burnished with the rays of the Sun and at other times dull, sometimes bubbling with the excitement of the prospects ahead and at other times nonchalant, have you often wanted the stream to have been broader or more slender, more shiny or more flat, quieter or noisier or neon green or hot pink in colour?

When you gazed at the stars on a clear summer night, some twinkling and the others just existing, have you wanted the stars to be any bigger or smaller or anything but what they are? When you’ve shivered from the sheer beauty of the serene ranges, the unpredictable valleys and the all-pervading snow on the mountains, have you thought of how the snow should have been whiter or the mountains more high or low. Have you ever been disgusted by the vast expanse of the seas and their utter might and wanted the waves to splash in a different manner and the sea to make less of a roaring noise and probably be some other colour? Have you? Have you ever?

If you have, then God help you!

And if you haven’t then may be, just may be, I might be able to help you.

When you wander by the stream, gaze at the stars, hike up the mountains or lie by the sea you admire them, you soak in their beauty. You don’t think of varying them. You haven’t. You have never thought of it because you are not conditioned to think like that, you were never taught to think like that and in some divine way you were not born to think like that.  You were taught to admire nature just the way she is, not change her, and not want to have her any other way. Regrettably, a lesson as basic as that, that you probably learnt in your mother’s womb and that you practice every living moment, you forgot to practice when you stood in front of the mirror.

When and whenever you looked in the mirror, you judged and judged the woman staring back at you, each time taking away a tiny bit of you inside. Each time you looked in the mirror you craved a person either fairer or slimmer or more curvaceous; you wanted a thinner nose or a different set of cheekbones, blue eyes or green eyes or more hair or less hair or more mass or less mass; you wanted something, anything but what you saw.

For all your brave front before the world and all the combats you survived, every night when you got home, stripped of your make up and your masks, undressed and uncovered, stark naked in front of the mirror, every night you lost a battle, a war, that you have probably raged against yourself since the day you looked into the mirror. Every night you go to bed wishing you were someone else or at the very least looked like someone else.

All the time you admired the stream, the stars, the mountains and the seas you did not perceive a little bit of you in each of them nor did anyone else come to your rescue but all those precious years as a child you naively kept searching for yourself in a Barbie Doll or other such callous and cruel projection of what the society wanted you to look like. And I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you because the day you were given that Barbie Doll in your hand, albeit unknowingly and unaware, you lost your first battle then. Somewhere down the years and many such brutal projections later, defeat seems like a part of you; a part that keeps you from liking yourself and being what nature made you to be.

You don’t look like a Barbie Doll; you don’t look like any doll. You can’t. You were not meant to. You are a living, breathing woman who looks like what nature intended you to look like, complete with less mass or more mass or less melanin or more melanin, more curves or less curves or no curves. You cannot ever look like what a corporate house thought young women should look like way back in 1959 and made millions out of it. I don’t blame them either. You and I gave those millions away to them along with some or a lot of our self esteem. You also cannot look like the other women. If that was the game plan we could have had clones instead of individuals. An unrealistic body image slowly and steadily gnaws at your strength and your beauty until one day you are unhappy and dead.

And I won’t be able to help you and nor will anyone else until you let go off your Barbie Doll, forget it like it was a bad dream and start your life afresh. You will have to unburden all your discontentment and insecurities, flush out your hideous notions and your masks and make up, annihilate yours and the society’s unrealistic and ugly projection of what you should look like and look into the mirror. And keep looking. Keep looking and keep staring until you fall in love with the woman staring back at you. You were not meant to change her. You were not meant to look like anything or anyone else but her. The little girl who played her childhood away was too vulnerable to see the monster lurking within the harmless looking dolls. But you are a mighty strong woman; stop playing with the little girl in you.

The Age of Indecisiveness

I have nothing particular to say today. I don’t know what to think or make of things. I feel like writing but I have no clue how to draw you in. I am not even slightly excited about anything for that matter.

There is nothing different about this day. The usual running around in the morning, the gulping of the uber strong hot cup, the half hearted bath and the complete disinterest in embarking on a new day at work.

I feel the exhaustion sometimes. But I am not coveting rest. Rest is scary. Rest is stagnant. So I am hell bent on putting one foot before the other just so I keep moving, in no particular direction. I have a journey ahead of me but no destination.

I feel something inside me today. I have been trying to touch it since morning. I appreciate the tangibility of things. It makes them more believable. Could that be the reason that I have not been able to understand feelings? Because I could not touch it, feel the material between my fingers and sense the way it feels on my skin… I can’t even smell it or I could make do with that.

Attachment is gradually losing meaning. There are so many things one gets attached to and then has to let go. Sometimes one gets scared and does not get attached. But atleast one makes a decision. I am not able to decide. To be or not to be is not the question. I am clueless about the question itself. Would you still expect me to answer? May be I will answer just to keep you happy. But inside me there is a storm brewing. I feel the calm before and I am waiting for the aggression that will come thereafter.

There is no flow to my thoughts. I am thinking of nothing in particular. But mostly I am thinking about you.

FAIR GAMES

Oh, I do not believe what I see

Your mask of sobriety

And insistence on lying so carefully

Have you not interpreted the stories

That the tell tale chemicals brewing say?

Have you not smelt unhurriedly

The balmy scent of affinity in the air?

And the utter casualty it could prove to be.

The accidental brushing of skin

Right across mine

And the heightened emotions that pass me by

Like a mindless butterfly

That bats its wings

As I sink in deeper

In your bottomland of pretentious nonchalance

Made of your seemingly insouciant words

And the unintentional glance.

Now, listen, you must cease

This troublesome demolition of me

With such immense amount of ease.

Can we not sit and negotiate

A fair game of affection?

May be over a coffee

or some great conversation?

If you only choose to consider my offer

I say we could both a game win

Of benevolent manipulation

And strictly no fancies and whims

Salaam! Comrades!

If you are my friend and have put up with me for over six months, you know me better. I know how you read my posts despite disagreeing or not really comprehending my spastic ramblings. Thou shall continue, comrade!

If you are not my friend and failed to bear with me for less than a week, go take a hike!

If to be or not to be is the question, you might as well hike now. We, in all probability, will not be.

So, comrades, I have lived on the face of this earth for 27 years now and I have met you in varied roles. One day you bore me in your womb, you gave me birth and you brought up a rowdy kid in such fine loving ways that I am mildly lady-like and socially suitable now and I am definitely more humane. You held my hand and taught me walking, struggling, you paid for my education, you taught me to earn my bread and you made me independent. You also played with me, introduced me to Shakespeare and Sidney Sheldon at the same time, covered up for me aplenty, scolded me and showed me what strengths I have. You pacified my thunderous rage and patiently trained me and shared your insights and sometimes just by being with me you made me a better person.

Then again you bought me ice-cream from your pocket money, you kept me grounded and you were just happy being happy with me. You stood there with your arms around me and let me cry and be homesick, you read mushy romances with me and indulged me in my extreme shopaholism, you fondly discussed my theories on mass annihilation and taught me dating tricks, you showed me the other side of the story when I was being volatile and reactionary, you made me feel beautiful and you made me feel safe, you gave me boy-advice and supported my cause and sometimes you just let me be with my cause when you did not even support it. You magically knew when I needed you’re silence and when I needed your words. You celebrated my success with me and you showed me how small my failures really are. You advised me and you still stayed by my side when I singed my finger one more time committing the same old mistake.

Do you remember that one time when we did not speak to each other for almost a month? Or some other time when it was just half a day and that other time when you did not even know where I was? Sometimes I lied to you that I was busy and sometimes I admitted to you that I was just being weird. You laughed it off. You were probably hurt and I probably was too caught up with myself to realize that. Have I apologized to you ever? Have I said in so many words that I really am never that busy and I really am weird but not enough to not know that I missed you whenever you or I have gone missing.

That one time we fought, you screamed and I was nasty. I remember all of those times with each one of you. You made your peace with me but I have never been able to make peace with myself. All the while I prayed hard to take away the distance that crept in between us, albeit fleetingly. Would you believe, for all my sarcasm and big talk, I am just a coward deep inside? I had a whole conversation with you in my head and we laughed over our silly fight when all the while I was sitting right in front of you acting pissed and refusing to look in your direction.

Just the other day, when something so small made me feel like I want to crawl beneath the bed and lick my wounds, when I felt desolate and defeated. And you called. How did you know I needed you more than I needed success? I did not know it myself. You did not even act affected or say something extra ordinary. You were just being you, you were just being a friend. And you brought me back to myself to the extent that I could brutally joke about the same thing that had made me cry for the past two days.

So, if you’ve been a friend to me you definitely know by now how insanely selfish and narcissistic I am. You know how I get so engrossed with new things that I conveniently forget the old ones. You know how I make a blunder, then another one and then another one. You know how I break down at the smallest failing, how criminally impulsively I lead my life and how I have troubled each one of you in my ever original ways.

You also know how I can never come upto you and tell you how much you mean or anything similar to that in words. You know how I shy away when you hug me or hold me or pay me a compliment. You know me. You’re still here. You have chosen to be my friend and you’re ready to bet your last penny on me. I am just amused how high you’re stakes are!

Because I am really here for one single reason. YOU.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SIN AND SATAN

When you propose to bake a cake on a regular Sunday, what do you essentially do? Now if you’re essentially a regular person, you would step out, with money, buy the flour, the eggs, the milk, the cream, the butter, the baking powder, the essence, the sugar and if you feel like being ornamental, may be some fruits or toppings. You pay the guy; take the stuff and you come back home. Then you go about this elaborate process of mixing the flour, the eggs, the milk, the cream, the butter, the baking powder, the essence, the sugar and some more. You meticulously make the batter and put the batter in the mold  put the mold in the oven, wait for an hour, you begin to smell the flavour, you poke with a knife, and finally, after all the effort, the thought process, the earnest intention and time, comes out a nice fluffy fresh cake! CAKE! No surprises.

When you were at the grocery buying the ingredients, you had one sole purpose in mind. May be some of us were wondering which pick up line to use tonight, which move to master, what would my raise be in office, how to outdo the opposite gender or bring in world peace once and for all, however, despite being immensely pre-occupied, you still knew that you were at the store to buy all the ingredients that you want – to do one thing - bake the cake. You could have thought of making bread or pudding or pie. But you did not! You thought of a cake! You had an unfaltering desire, an unshakeable want, a steadfast ambition that will stop at nothing but a fully baked cake. You really can’t tell me that you did not have the cake in mind when you meticulously chose to buy each of the ingredients that is needed to bake a cake, now, can you? You had an INTENTION. And now the world knows about it.

Some of us have to get to work, some of us have to be there for someone and some of us have a life. For all the rest who can spare some, I know that you know that I really am not talking about a cake today. Today is a different day. A day when you stop believing all that is canned, packed and marketed to you. A day when suddenly all facts seem fiction. Today is the day when we will go back to a man and a woman, to Adam and Eve, a walk in the Almighty’s Garden of Eden, to the forbidden fruit, to the very beginning of the end, to the serpent and to the one who made it all possible.

So, here goes the story. God tells the happy duo to lodge at the Eden, take a walk, make merry but whatever you do, stay away from the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden. Eve speaks to the tempting serpent, falls for the trap and eats a fruit. Not just a fruit, The Fruit! Then comes Adam, follows Eve’s footsteps and eats it too.  

Bang (pun intended) ! One little fruit brings mankind tumbling down from paradise to a godforsaken place called Earth where there are no free fruits, no beauty that cannot be bought, no space and no peace. Eve and all womankind stay cursed forever for that one slip, Adam and all mankind now need to slog their asses and God looks really pissed! And in the middle of all this, one person becomes legendary. He is, followed and renounced, cursed and discussed, loved and despised, always in the limelight, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Satan.

You have heard the story before. You have reaped the fruits. You have been condemned and made to suffer. For one Woman and one Man and that one Fruit. For Satan and The Sin and Sex. And you have meticulously believed in the story that had it not been for Satan, there would be no sex, and Adam and Eve would probably still be roaming somewhere down Eden’s lanes without feeling even an ounce of the traditional attraction that now exists between a man and a woman. However that did not happen. Since the time of the Original Sin, women have thought of men as crazy sex maniacs, men have thought of women as devious bitches and sex became an erotic taboo. The Fruit left a wound that left mankind sore for eternity, gave Satan the kind of publicity that he had not bargained for and God’s plan of asexuality between men and women was thought best to be extensively preached and secretly breached.

But not once did you question the motive. Not once did you think that if God did not ultimately intend Adam and Eve to get attracted, why did he go to the pain of making a man and a woman in a way that they would fit so well together, why did He create the glove if there was to be no hand in it and why did He have to have all the ingredients ready, in the perfect proportion and a timely pre-heated oven if He did not INTEND to bake the cake?

Go home, comrade. Today I will not sell you a piece of my brain. I will not opine or make a statement. Today, go and bite hard into Life. Take a moment and enquire. Breathe and bite harder till you bleed. In the giddiness of the pain you will see… either a Halo or a Horn… but would it really matter?

CONVERSATIONS that never happened !

I can’t stop looking into your eyes. I have tried hiding it, denying it, changing angles but I have never really considered stopping. Call me a romantic or just a goddamn fool. I have looked into your eyes from a distance and afar. But every time I have lost my soul in them, or did you wrench it out of me? What do you do? Do you hypnotize or is it voodoo? Or are we keeping a score card here? You can hold me in one motionless position and a mindless time frame, absolutely purposeless. Be it the earthiness of the iris or the sadistic black of the pupil. It could even be the bland detachment of the rest of the conjunctiva. But I stare at the phenomenon like a helpless juvenile. You comply when you feel like it. I have seen the flecks grow darker and inquisitive but you never ask any questions. You blink and you break the ties.

What did I do? Did I seem detached? Or did you spot the weaknesses even before I welled up? When we first met I thought we could play and trample all over each others’ lives. Then make a quick exit. I could come home to hopelessness and you could have won some shreds of my dreams. But somewhere down the blurred timelines and trivial attractions, we forgot to ask whether we were both playing at the same game. I am still hopeless and I am crying. But even you could not go home jubilant with the pieces of my heart. Judge me, but I stealthily scratched off a cell or two of the person inside you. And if you ever find the time and the will, look closely, a lifetime from now. The marks of my nail might just be there. Hear more closely and you might hear the story I chose not to tell or that you chose to forget.

The should-have-beens took over so smoothly that we forgot to live a life. And when you said you wanted to explore more of you, you could have only looked into my eyes. I don’t know what you were aspiring for but the trophy you won that day is still hidden amongst some unsorted fears and unfulfilled dreams under my bed. If the desire ever overwhelms you, we will hold hands and sneak in on my life. On tiptoes we will look for my soul. We will sit on the floor and giggle and poke each other out of the mundane existence that we chose over love. And then I will look into your eyes again. Pray, don’t blink this time. Don’t break the ties. I may not have the resilience to play again.

THE MODERN DILEMMA OF A POST MODERN WOMAN

Whenever I sit down with my friends from the same gender, besides having a good time I also learn about life. Like how much and to what extent it sucks. We come together, we rip each other apart, we have our fun and leave. But these others are the sane-practical-working-earning women. So when I say we leave, I mean they leave. They leave and catch a good eight hour sleep so they can repeatedly show the world their mettle. I, on the other hand, work too; but mostly I speak gibberish and throw mood swings. So when I go home I think about the tragic status of our lives, lose sleep over it, shirk work the next day and get depressed. Add to that the recent turning into a full grown 27 year old. You get the drift, right?

No. Don’t run away yet. There IS a REAL problem and I WILL come to IT and it’s NOT exaggerated and it has epidemic outreaches.  It is more painful than menstrual cramps, it is probably rarer than finding a good maid and it definitely takes more efforts than it takes Angelina Jolie to do what she does – finding a boy.

If you are in your late twenties and are engaged any which way to any which one, you are a happy soul, my friend. You will be cherished and nourished for the final kill, you will be trained and readied for life of much known marital bliss. But if you are a soon-to-be-thirty, gear up for the hunt of your life. I give you a mission, time bound, and there is no leave-it option. And you are not psyched if you feel the Cosmos is out to get you. It is.

If you are reminiscent of those teenage dreams of passionate hand holding and whispering of sweet nothings, my advice to you would be take a cold cold shower, woman, and come back to me, smile, and listen well. This is not a dream. This is hardcore business. Get a target, quote a price, rip them apart or negotiate, make a gain and walk victorious when you have and till you do, you must aspire, perspire, mourn, ache, call names, suffer, fall down, push up, pull through, look gracious, small talk, pity talk, reject and dish out or take some random nonsense but YOU CANNOT HIDE. You’re getting old, girl, and the world is watching.

Your primary aim is to catch an unsuspecting target. The suspecting ones will ask too many questions anyway. And make it look effortless. For instance, purposely take off one whole hour for boy finding after a back breaking session at work or a date-gone-wrong. You must prove your might. Do yoga. That will help you tone down. Plus getting into the habit will help with the calm you will need when you lose the deal. Eat salads. Boys dig it these days. Discuss with your folks what kind of tricks to pull. It makes for great conversation. Additionally it will help your parents to vent their frustrations. I am sure they have some. Practice looking shy in front of the mirror. But keep it low key (C’mon now, you’re going to be thirty!).

Learn to laugh and forget taking sides. You don’t have one and you were on the wrong side anyway. Believe in it. Don’t earn too much. You think you deserve the money? Trash the thought. Too bad you worked too hard for it. Take a pay cut if nothing else works. Get used to being subjected to random relative banter taunting you for not having succeeded in your mission. You’re cousin got married last month. Take a hint. The focus is on YOU. How YOU are alone and miserable. Wait, you aren’t miserable? Act, dudette! Do not watch rom coms. They find the boy out of nowhere. But you are a practical woman who reasons, you’re boy won’t be coming from nowhere. You have a type? Change it. Your type does not matter. If you fail, and you will a couple of times to be modest, blame it on destiny. It’s the vaguest argument ever. And destiny can’t talk back. You will be safe. While you are at it, harden up your brain. You will be asked if you wear swimsuits and go for inter-city drives, whether you’re straight and still live with a female friend from college, whether you will contribute your pay cheque to the collective family pay cheque pool amongst other things. Smile. And power through. Some of them are supposed jokes and the rest of them make you an ideal doormat. Don’t try to differentiate between the two.

Learn to ‘settle’. That’s your single most important objective. Focus. And any given minute you feel you might waiver, turn to good old Facebook. Everyday someone is ‘settling’ and there’s visual proof on your news feed. The Cosmos is speaking to you, woman.

And the rest of you who think the above 800 odd words are copious amounts of gibberish, join my guild. You do not belong. Don’t even bother. Your hopes are gigantically imbalanced and you believe in love. For Chrissake, you were asked to grow up!

HOLIER-THAN-THOU

I mean, what is it about you? Yes, I mean you and the whole bunch of ‘em that you lead. What do you eat? How much do you sleep at night? Do you not sleep at all? Do you stealthily stir something in your bath water that when you come out all bathed and fresh, you are not only sanitised but also holier than me? I say, I pray every day; I bathe and eat; I make friends and act gregarious; I also crack jokes. Just like you. In fact, sometimes when we have the time and I am not confessing medical insanity, we should sit down and talk about the similarities we have; we might even begin to like each other. But now, I shall only talk about the fundamental difference. You and Me.

I have lead life for 26 years now following one principle; keep the mess out. When I see trash, guess what I do with it? Duh! I trash it. There’s my heart and there is the bin. I treasure the bin more. It gobbles down all the mess, never complains, never judges, does not even protest regarding the trash-ability of things or situations or people, it does its job, that being keeping my life mess-free.

But you, on the other hand, have lived your life… seriously, I am clueless about your principle. What is it, really? You keep all of it in your heart, eh? Don’t you face space management issues? No? The dirt doesn’t bother you? When on a lonely evening you take a stroll across your life as you have lived it and you continually spot the dust lying over the emotions, or a bunch of trampled feelings, or shards of humiliations lying all over the streets; don’t you feel the incisions in your feet? Do you at least bend down, pluck off the shards, observe the wound, and feel the blood oozing out? Do you feel apologetic for not being able to bear the acuteness of the pain? Perhaps, you even contemplate walking with the shards inside the skin. But never do you feel the need to clean up. You make mistakes, you savour the deed, you shed a tear. You feel the pain, you bear the loss, but nevertheless, you keep the accounts open. Not only do you not trash them in the bin, you ingeniously did not even buy the bin, lest you are tempted.

Now, listen, don’t take me otherwise. I am not critical. I am objectively trying to understand how you lead your life the way you do. It will make for a great conversation. We shall talk about how interesting your mess is and how cold my cleanliness, also your pain and my non-chalance. We could stray a little bit to bitterness but then you will have to lead therein. I deleted all those chapters long time. I don’t remember them. And don’t you go checking in the recycle bin, you sly thing! I deleted them permanently. Fine, give the credit to shift+delete! We could also talk about making new mistakes. Too bad you’re holding onto old ones. I have a free mind and free hands.

BUTTERFLIES IN MY STOMACH

I have been feeling strange lately; like a hundred colorful butterflies flapping their wayward wings in my stomach. Sometimes I feel the weakening of the knees; I almost buckle down to surrender. There’s a mild nervousness in my ways, like a tight knot somewhere in the chest. My hands shake slightly; I blame it on sleep deprivation. I don’t know why I don’t sleep timely; it is amazing how I can lie in the dark, figuratively still and yet shaking within. I keep turning to look at the other side of the bed. It is almost like I will find a pair of eyes there, looking, into my eyes, despite the pitch darkness of the night, they will find their way, all the way to mine, collate the stories and reach a conclusion, a conclusion that I cannot reach, that is as endearing as it is nerve wrecking, that is as arousing as scary it could get. But then maybe I have called my peace with this nervousness; maybe I have furtively started savoring it, just like one would savor a breath of fresh air and dread when the plug will be pulled and suddenly there neither will be fresh air nor the need for it.

I have been feeling happy lately; like there is a piece of dark chocolate in my mouth throughout the day, a bitter sweet taste forever on my tongue and a head rush that is like a perpetual euphoria in broad daylight. I can lie on my bed and smile, read a book and not know the content; dress up with immense enthusiasm for no particular reason and constantly look mysterious to others. I keep watching the milk overflow from the vessel, I can doodle for hours together and I can wax poetic on something as flat as a ladle. The other evening I even sympathized with a roach, tried, tried harder, to take its life and while I was trying I saw it crawl away; like it did not see or perhaps didn’t care of me looming large as a life threat. In fact, I smiled at it too whereas my usual reaction would be to step on it so mercilessly that its dying wish is to die; sooner.

I have been in love lately.