Signifier Signified

I was sitting in class today, hearing about how what we desire is what we never get.
It's a world of images, images of our self that we see and those that we try to live up to, all the time traumatizing the real. The real, that existed before we learnt how to express everything except that.

I was thinking then, that we murder everyday little by little of what we are, by trying to fit into structures and language. The need to perfectly express everything gradually desiccates what we want to say, what ought to be said. Our desire then is just a desire for lack, always pretending that we want fulfillment whereas actually always scared that the sense of inadequacy will suddenly disappear one day, Leaving us complete and perhaps real.

Why can some conversations only happen in the dark, when the lights go off and you can no longer be reflected in another pair of eyes? why does one feign happiness to the extent that it's almost comic how sad you actually are? how can fears and doubts just go away in a day because you want them to? why do you practice drifting away in your head so many times that you almost desire it, but when the dream is over you feel the desperate need to hold on and frantically make that call, all the while sounding 'normal'? why do you pretend to not see? why do you pretend to not feel?

It's the image of myself that i saw, happy, smiling, normal, in control. This is the image i sold, also to myself.

There's this dream that i often have, of being chased on a street, you're tying to run but can't, like your legs are tied together by some imaginary thread and you try so hard to snap it but you can not because it's not actually there, so you keep running helplessly. You keep running until you're so tired that your eyelids feel heavy with the effort of resisting opening. The next day you hardly remember the dream, in spite of having seen it over and over again. Do i forget to actually forget? or is it because i want to see it again, run helplessly again?

Fear, love, hope, tenderness,reassurance,stability- an endless list of signifiers. I ask for them because i don't know how ask for what i want, but at least now i know that you and i existed before everything. That there is something that will keep our secret by never being expressed, even between us.

:D

I am giggling for no reason, it's strange.

Love...Making

They were a whole
A groaning, sweating
Happiness.
Its loves and hates
Intermingled in
In the salt that
One tasted
And then the other.


The brassiere that lies torn atop
Her skirt
An absconding button that hides under the bed
An upturned shoe
They all look mesmerized
At the dance of those
Souls that had longed


An invisible gap
That filled and filled
Drawing black from
The fading night.
The deepest music
That sets their goose bumps dancing.
An effortless togetherness


Searching fingers
Tired bodies
Wandering lusts
Interlocked now.
In this moment
When the crisp white linen
Dies many times over.
They take a strange delight in
Crushing it.
Moving like snakes
The feel of starch on their bare backs.


It roams
Unstoppable in their souls
It’s an animal
A demon let loose
This is what they had told themselves
To never do, to never feel
To never need.
Come see
Two ghosts become one .

ये लम्हा ...

One of these cold mornings, on a bus smelling of moongfali i was humming to myself

ये लम्हा फिहाल जी लेने दे...

This is a strange time, in the lives of us. College is ending in a few months and one still has no idea of where to head after this space- that accepts people; loves them, tortures them, changes them, confuses them, deepens them-will cease to be. I've never before felt this strong need to be rooted again, to at least know where you belong.

It's only ironical that i would truly discover my love for the old city of Delhi at such a time. I am no historian,infact i am so bad that the only order i can truly claim to remember is that of the two world wars. But what draws me to the book market at Golcha cinema,the lanes of Chandani Chowk,the Grandeur of Jama Masjid, the buzz of Meena Bazaar, is the desire to breathe in as much as i can of the poetry of a place that seems as familiar, as it is obscure.


A moment, fleeting, transient, unconquerable- sun filled winter wind seeping into our greedy awe filled eyes. Koyel(my most favorite journey companion) and I; looked and looked;savored and savored;loved and loved;lusted and lusted. Red Fort gradually passing by as our rickshaw veered towards Chandani Chowk. The earlier part of the day was spent in the old book market. Where Arundhati Roy lies with James Hadley Chase and Manohar Kahaniyaan attracts more see-ers than Agatha Christie;its a great leveler.These are lanes where your favorite books, the hard jackets that you had dreamt of lie mysteriously undiscovered. Finding books in markets like these gives one a great sense of destiny, a book printed many years ago, somewhere far away in London,ends up on your book shelf. Having passed through many readers, multiple owners it finally finds you, the one it was printed for. It knew, perhaps, even then when it was still un-yellow, when it's pages still smelt of fresh ink, when it did'nt yet bear the marks of coffee had by somebody in some apartment in some city in some country-that you were going to come and get it one day. You were waiting for it and it was for you and what could have been a more romantic backdrop for this passionate communion, than this old city.

It is a place where the moth eaten, weathered, broken and rusted is still alive. The carved wooden doors and arches tell you that they might have disappeared from your steel and glass Delhi, but this Dilli still loves them. The kids here still fly kites on their terraces, cards are still played in the narrow alleyways, the bazaars still let you look at a candyfloss man with kids around him, that little more which has nothing to do with owning or buying.

A few paranthas, gajar ka halwa and an entire day of awaragardi later;we're ready to leave. Promising each other that we will meet again, there must surely be a book that's waiting for me to come back and get it, there is so much that i haven't seen-there is still so much history waiting to mock me.