Memories in a box

I kept my childhood in a box: old tapes, my favorite iron maiden poster, a few marbles- blue and yellow, colored pencils and some pastels, sketches of a girl I don't remember, a few Archies, tin tins  and Masud Ranas, old letters that still smell of perfume, a T-shirt that I wrote "18 and life to go" on, and my diaries that tell of a time so full of hopes and dreams: a life without darkness and fear!

What we feel as love

And what we feel now
Changes as the west wind blows
We drift and stumble
As we feel our past
Is a laughable laughter
Of meaningless affections
That startle us, blind us and
Make us believe that we love!

All these lonely people

When I drive through the roads of Dhaka, or take a short stroll around the neighborhood, I almost never take a look around. Whenever I'm angry with a rickshaw puller or a pedestrian who think the road were previously owned by their forefathers, I seldom have a good look at them. At times I scream at them or give them a look which, given a chance, would have killed them. Over the years I managed to distance myself from all the things that lie outside the comfort of my car; roads that I travel or places where I go! Life has changed so much, realities too! Things get filtered before they appear in my eyes. I see what I want to see, how I want to see them. I started looking at things through a tinted glass.

At times, unmindfully, when I look them in their eyes, I see despair. I see how agonized they have been. A sense of helplessness, sadness and, at times, anger surface in their eyes. One good look in their eyes and you can tell how life has treated them so far, their past and present and even the future. It gets me to think, if there is a god, he must have been one eyed! How could he be so inattentive to the needs of all these people who, in no way, are responsible for their birth?

Sometimes I think, there is a fine line between being what we are now and what we could have been! I could have easily been born into a family as theirs, so devoid of hopes and dreams, not knowing what tomorrow might bring for me! I could be looking at the could-have-been-me in the car who would seldom take a good look in my eyes and understand what it means to be 'me'.

When I look them in the eyes I feel pain. I try to imagine my life if I were one of them! How does it feel to be like them? Live their life? Go back to their shabby little place they call home! Does it feel like life when you know there's not much to hope for, nothing more to long for. Do they dream, dream of a life without a fear, and so full of love! Do they want to touch the girl in the car, tousle her hair, kiss her mouth and tell her how they love her so much? Do they dream to own a car some day and drive past the speeding vehicles all around!

What could life be like if there's nothing left to dream? How painful could that be! When I look them in the eyes I try to feel their loneliness, and at times my eyes get wet. But for a very short period while I’m on the road. When I get to work and my life begins, I tend to forget all about it! I realize the loneliness of all these people doesn't get better no matter how I want to feel about it. They are lonely because they don’t have god by their side.

the merchant of six seasons

I wear six colors, all in different times. I feel happy when its winter. I’m pissed at summers and I cry when it rains. I feel uncannily resurrected when a season is changing, I smell it, feel it in my skin. Memories from the distant past creeps onto me. My mind flies like thistledown, flies further away from faraway. I wear colors and that’s the springtime of my heart!

Then I’m sad when the nights are long and breezy. I’m the solitary soul in search of solitude. My thoughts meander around "like a restless wind inside a letterbox" across the universe. I’m lonelier as the nights get longer hovering against the walls. At times I’m so happily sad! And when it starts to rain I feel the tears. It’s such a delight. I go out in the rain, touch it, feel it, smell it.

Lonely Friday afternoons are mine. I lie on my bed beside the window. Sunlight comes in like half-spoken words through the opening of the curtains. I read my favorite book. The pages fill my thoughts and my surreal existence. I go to this magic world of melting time and never want to come back. I feel happy.

And then I’m angry. I’m infuriated at the dryness of summer. I long for the rain like a frog. I long to go for a drive in the rain with my right shoulder soaking wet from the rain sneaking in through the window I keep open for smoking. I’m fucking angry at summer for not raining!

My life shines and then fades away. My mood wears different tones and then withers away. I look for solace in every fold of season that brings me colors. Colors that I use to paint my whole life.

somewhere between nowhere and goodbye

I've been wondering, how fine is the line, between here and faraway, now and forever, time and the lack of it! what does it take to make life happen? what does it matter if you don't. aren't we supposed to roll like a stone on the bent of time anyway? I'm so confused! about myself and everything! i have a problem, a huge one!!!

I'm caught between now and forever. i don't see the line, and i can't tell the difference. i have my today now which falls into the abyss of eternity the next moment. and then the moment is gone and creates another. i look around, try to hold on to something. if only i could keep it from hastening away! the moments seem like eternity. its the repetition of the same moments that freeze me, take away the words and push me back in the abyss i was already idling in! the moments are moving, moving away from me, leaving me behind.

the weary age of time tires me. it makes me sad and my existence short of purpose. what is it that i live for? love is waning, losing its charm, taken away by the "moment". my over-exhausted heart wanders about to have a shelter, a place of it's own. there have been too many tears, too many hearts broken, clobbered, bent out of shape. i end up being at a place i choose to lock myself in with impermeable layers of heartlessness. the moment exists! it moves. without me. i stay fucking motionless, somewhere between nowhere and goodbye!

the demons in us all

Are we really what we are or are we everything we are not?

What exactly are we? Are we what we think we are or what others think we are? Perception or reality? What’s the difference? Or what does it matter!

How we long to know ourselves, day after day, forever! How many “selves” do we have? And which one dominates? If 10 people think of us in 10 different ways are we all 10 of them? Or are we sum of all?

Is our very existence relative then? We exist, or we believe that we exist through the eyes of beholders. If all on a sudden, they cease to acknowledge that we exist, do we still exist?

Our existence is confirmed by the fact that people see us and recognize us to be existent. Our life is essentially a journey for recognition; recognition for our “selves”, our state of being alive, marks that we left on the paths that we had started our journey on. We don’t exist in us. We exist in others. The feeling of “me” is obscure. It loses its strength when it resides in “others”. And the others tell us what we should be and should not be, what we should do and shouldn’t. We believe that we are pretty because we have heard others tell so. At one point that becomes conviction. Perception becomes reality. We try to please others, we try to be others. Others become our identity. We become labeled. Mother thinks I’m kind, my colleagues think I’m an asshole. The rickshaw puller who scratched my car thinks I’m the angriest person on earth; two signals away, the little girl who sells flowers thinks I am the sweetest! Which one is real? Who I really am?

We don’t know what we are. We don’t know what we want. We meander around and try to find the meaning of it all. What is the driving force? What exactly is “us”? At times, when we wake up deep at night, our soul has left our body and raised above, we get a glimpse of our soulless body down below. A sense of innate wonderment as to who we are overwhelms us. The body with no sense of belonging tries to attach itself with the soul, the very “us”, raised above. In that electrifying moment, for a few moments, we become the “others”, and see how “others” see us. When we wake up the next day, it’s all gone!

The universe conspires to make us believe in a certain way. One day, in a winking moment, that changes. The gentlest boy in the class begins to kill while a serial killer sheds a tear for a puppy that was run-over at the dawn. We change our “selves”, the labels.

We are angels, we are demons. We are soulful, we are wistful, heartless. We are all we are not, we are nothing we are. And when the door of perception closes, we cease to exist!

of love and other demons

i was told love was Divine. it comes from deep within. you feel this sense of wilderness as you feel love, you are lost, lost in the middle of everything. everything you touch turns blue. you build this imaginary castle where you are the king (a little lonely though!), where your queen awaits you. you feel you can wait a lifetime to be with her, hold her hand, hug her tight as you feel her breathing softly in your face. you tousle her hair. you hold her drooping face little loosely. nervously you kiss and million flowers bloom, birds sing and suddenly it starts to rain. and you feel you can be like that forever!!

i believed all these and more. i even felt somewhat similar, all in the past though. i still can remember the first few days, months of constant nausea caused by nervousness, added to love. the anticipation of seeing her and the uncertainty of it, enough space between two meetings, made love a thing to really pursue! it was anything but a mammalian drive! it was a different day, a different time where the sun used to shine and birds used to sing. (afterall!)

do i still believe that! i so wish love could be looked upon like that forever. the impression of love changed its form and meaning ever since. it doesn't turn everything i touch into blue anymore. no longer does it make me feel like a puppy in want of comfort. the eyes that once were never weary of hers, are now bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids.

love is waning, everyday, every moment. poor little passion falls asleep. how far away the stars seems, how far is our first kiss, the shyness that made you shiver!! and how old is our heart?

that we are tired, for other love await us?

before us lies eternity, our soul, our love ...and a continual farewell...