Brown Nothingness

There she was, clad in her favorite chaste white chiffon dress ,trying to save herself from the occasional mud slush that projectiled towards her from the tyres of cars that had to drive through this monsoon. It was overcast and the clouds seem to promise more shower. She stood at the crossroads undecided where to go. Sunday should be spent with friends and family but in case of non availability of both, one should engage in productive activities like reading , exercising and doing good to the society. But for the moment she fancied nothing. It was as if nothingness had its own beauty. If it were corporate debt restructuring or the ensuing recession or the presidential elections or cooking maybe, some logic would have gotten into it. For now, watching traffic seemed be a productive activity too. The end products were more subtle but they exist nonetheless. For example she could now spot the latest model of the latest fancy automobile in the town. Nothingness is delusional maybe, she thought and moved onto the next coffee shop. Maybe coffee was not nothingness, it was made to fill up for all empty spaces. The shop was bustling with people and she could not understand this sudden fetish amongst people to stay out on a Sunday morning. Quiet places are extinct like drinking water with adequate BOD. She found a small place by the window, table for two she thought. Virginia slims and Arabic coffee should do for the day. Drizzle, coffee and a notepad without music. Ideal it seems. Thoughts came in and evaporated and humdrum continued. Maybe nothingness never exists or even if it does we just give it names and forms and shapes. For some its loneliness but for some it is bliss. What about that imaginary voice in her head. All the past days of all the past years have been translated into so many events but this stopover seems like complete in so many ways. For example she does not have to worry about who killed whom in the latest sci-fi movie or who invented what or who has the latest gadget with him. Maybe nothingness is an algorithm to kill time. Why dont you paint or write or network, is what her dear friend would have said. She would have then gotten into a never ending conversation and then gone off to read something. But in absence of everything and presence of nothingness, its was just that old notepad and she.Nothingness is bliss after all.

Unread Unflipped

Trudging through the lanes of unremembered faces
The dusty streets of the Delhi summer
Shake me and bring forth, the impression of reality
Which is nothing but surrealism wrapped in sequin
And I see you through these impressions
Carefully plodding through those mazes
Writing endlessly and loving your beloved
And perhaps making coffee for the evening.
Musings that I cannot express
Probably stay aloft the boat of thoughts
That you put across and relate to a cause,
And oh! I love that smile over the steam
That rises from that steel plate of hot food.
Darkness has been a good friend to me
Perhaps you too find solace in it
Hopes and affections recreate my reality
And it’s just the satiating smell of the old book
I am sure that we shall remember both.

The strategic repositioning of a no-brand

Ah! What a day it was. The rich aroma of coffee mixed with the music of the zydeco was so relieving. It was as if a moment from her past life has awakened her and made her think of the last bit of her remaining life. Relativity seems to be the most interesting discovery of theoretical physics. She could justify her entire being on that. Think of the problem from someone else’s frame of reference and you might end up solving it. But empathy was a virtue unasked for in her world.
Anyhow, the brutal reality of her world was that it was realistically elusive. Thinkers were outdated, emotionals were in. Same protoplasmic configurations but massively restructured to behave in a manner that would single out any iota of similarity between the two of them. And with each passing day , similarity was a passé. Attend me because I am unique, and please don’t talk to me if I do not enmesh my words in a convoluted mesh of jargon and befuddle you at every instant because I am unique. And in this world, listening was the most dreaded vice you could have. And having opinions was so great a virtue, you need to be well read for that, she thought. But nonetheless, words work for many of us. Don’t they? But she had given up because she knew she was no match for her world. She would read her solitary piece every day and talk to herself and live what she felt made no difference to anyone. Probably, grey was her favourite colour because of that.
She thought that she would take a top down approach to this problem. She remembered on of the revered member of her world using this phrase as if it were his middle name. So, the problem statement first. She had little concern for the world she lived in, little did she care for her state of confusion, for her loss of spoken world and for her ignorance and for self-made realities and for her arrogance which kept her immune from the world she did not fit in. So, she could survive in this world. She had a couple of people to write to. So what exactly was wrong? Well, she had to fight for so many things in life that she had developed a passion for it. Strong as she was, she would not give up so easily. She would get the means to sustain herself and probably live the way she wanted to. But what about the loss of people around her. She was not a social person, nor a revered one. But she wanted people who could hear her out. The ones who had put her into this world had long involved themselves into their own worlds. She had a friend who could actually hear her talk . But of late his life changed and he knew he had to listen to so many people out there. So here she was. Trying to define if it was a loss or if it was a sense of loss. It did not appear to be either. Oh but wait, the problem statement. She had no one to speak to with the departure of her last audience, she had to put a stop to her words and think even more.
So what could be done? She did not know. She had no means to sustain herself. Living frugally on the fringes of last worldly means of sustenance, she could go on for sometime may be. Words were a welcome respite from all these worries. But that resource was dead maybe.
So what next, life cannot be so depressing. But what could she do? Still looking out for answers. Perhaps, another grey evening may put her back into the world where she would like to be. And today even the sky was painted grey.