Sometimes I just dream. I try to make them more convincing each time. Infact, thats all I do.

The hand held camera walks back. The video ripples up and down. It shows a shadowed face walking by the gleam of the standing streetlight. The video captures his torso, bulgy stomach, protruding hairy chests. His breaths are heavy. A look behind and turns to the lane on the left.

Five minutes later, he runs. Half embarassed, half remorseful. Camera runs behind. Sees the neighbours waving goodbye to their guests. Suddenly feels a spasm of self-consciousness. Opens the gate in haste. Sees his mother slowly advancing but stopping abrutly at his sight. Wide angle shot. He closes the gate and wonders why the hell did a stranger on the motorcycle make him change his mind.

The hue is grey. The verandah light illuminates him when hes on the threshold of opening the door. Video turns dark as he enters the living room, waits till his mother is inside and bangs shut.

CUT

Incoherent Mumbles

Bite the lip, curse this world
Sometimes it gleams with hope
Other times,it presents honey-voiced assurances
Mostly, it never cares.

Hugging your world tight, with kisses all over its face
Sometimes tearfully, sometimes lustfully.
We all wonder, whats so much for him to worry about ?
Just shut up, will you ?

We all end up the same.
A few less fights, a few more crimes
never add up.
What is this ramble inside ?
Why is this rogue-eyed confession ?
SCREAM.

I want you.
Isn't it plain enough ?
The eyes never meet, ways vapourise
Moments wait anxiously but they soon cease to exist
I want to smell, to feel, to touch
to reel under the ecstasy of the perfume.
No, I have already seen the moon and the stars
There aren't many wonders left.
Why can't this be prized out too ?
Why do you have to remind me of traditions.
Please, I am somebody you do know.
Give me a second look.
A moment's hope.
Don't just walk away, into the crowd.
I can't yell for I am a coward.
But can't you just look back,
Atleast for once.

No NO NOT AGAIN!

I didn't look back. The crowd walked by without as much as giving me a glance. My life is only this much, atleast, this year. The dust flew amongst the evening rays.

Now I am dreaming. I know that this is a dream.
A cinema ticket for two. Me and my brother are supposed to go for it. The show is at five-thirty in the morning. The time is past midnight. I am watching TV with my mother. Her hands are put across my shoulder. Time to time she ruffles my hair lovingly. I hear the drops thud against the tarpaulin of the car porch. I stretch across to see the illuminated ones fall down through the lamp's effuse. There he comes. Mother opens the door. I wait patiently for him to give a nod to the theatre. But as I half-expect he is in a sour mood. Dejected, I walk through the streets. Its not raining anymore. The streetlights gleam amongst the pools. Kiran comes along and tells me he is going. I ask him to go on and not wait for me. Now I am with her. In an autorickshaw, with a highly irritable driver. I ask her if she could accompany me. The reply is a muted one.

Anand runs across the field relentlessly. He is giving it all. He might not be able to keep the possession for long but he makes sure that the counterpart can't too. On the other wing plays a lanky boy. But where's Go-? The ball is netted again. The heads sink further. Now he sees me on the bench sticking out a torn shoe.

Atop a pile of broken academic dreams, I sit again, denying my own defeat. Acceptance finally sees light. Frustrations creep onto my thoughts, they turn -

Behind-the-scenes ( Draft autosaved at 6:56 )

Golden as the heat, out of the sands,
Lustrous amid wavering air,
A human form.
The slow-mo is turned on
Besides, men are also turned on.

Formulating success / Past Forward

Music moves on. Mostly inappropriately. But there is that undertone that still remains wholesome. Close my eyes.
********************
Moments wait anxiously. Somewhere else, thousands have gathered to celebrate the arrival of new hopes. In some other beds, men might have already turned into predators. I look onto that sea of decorated blackness only to realise that it doesn't make much of a difference whatever day it is.

********************

Another bubble blackened. I turn over the paper and see the questions stretch even further. Flustered, I decide to give this test a miss. My eyes look over his shoulder and directs the hand to darken a few more of the bubbles.

*********************

"Happy birthday! No wonder that Tsunami also occured this day." , followed by a smug. As a reply I get to hear playful gaaliyaan.
In the midst of the conversation I remind her that the buji cousin of mine has left for Delhi in search of greener pastures to exercise his mind on.

**********************

We nine are on the field. The ground is new to us. Robustly built guys are on the opposite half. " We aren't playing for money, are we ? " I hear someone say. I wriggle a couple of times just to let myself know that I am going to play. I run to my position. A few minutes later, the kick is taken and as usual Anand passes it straight onto me.

***********************

I sit in that tensed room. Last minute revamps occur incessantly. And I stand up and consciously leave my head blank. The hands are stretched out to unravel the mystery that question paper would present for one last time this Christmas.

************************

The music has been played for over seven times as I script "the future already in store."

PS- Yeah, its available for just 990 now. ;)

Breaks and Reminders

Cannot stop reminding myself how stupid I am. I accept, okay ?! That seems to settle it. Now, I can breathe free and write what I want to.
There are a lot of stops. Drinks breaks, unwarranted breaks, unreasonable ones and so on. Well, infact, the only thing there is, are breaks. The only thought that I keep reminding myself I have is ' I want to break free ' . Ofcourse, I have no idea what it is that I want to get away from. Given the oppurtunity, I think it would be myself.
I hope I could 'stand-by' and get up after this academic year ends. Well, its not as if I am not trying but mother keeps waking me up.
Now, there is this chemistry ma'm I am answerable to for not attending (the classes) for the past one month. I try to convince myself that I dont have to give any excuse because I am beyond her jurisdiction. They say there is something called social etiquettes. A thing quite hard to conceive.
Then there is this maths sir whose classes I have been not attending for, well, the past one month too. And to him, I am not answerable coz even he doesn't know it. But there is this lingering fear that he would catch me by the scruff of the neck oneday. Whoof......
And here I am sitting. Can't stop from putting on a smile, in hindsight. Uthaale ya phenk de, le le ya chod de
Then there is this small business of a career which everybody reminds me of.

There is this frustration of hurting the near and dear ones. The guilt that refuses to go away. I retort, to no avail. I refuse to accept, with the same result. I do nothing but make a big fuss about it and confess to the person I like confessing to, yet without any use. I dream of being a footballer just so that I could get away from this. I crave for a company that I get. So now I crave for anything that I could genuinely feel hard done by. I dream of being a successful writer, so that I can do the thing I like the most, which is, nothing. For that, I have to move men's hearts. Why can't you bloddy assholes read all that I am writing and be in awe of it and give me a job offer. Preferably, 30k per month salary.
Rot, rot, rot. Pester, pester, pester I don't know what more to say. Drifting off from truth, masking everything by revealing the mask. Suffocating purely because of no reason. Just suffocating because I claim myself to be suffocating. Accusing myself of being a dufus, an illiterate, someone who only sleeps, eats, and the other primal things. The only thing that I like is to be entertained. Is it much ? Can't sustenance and entertainment go hand in hand. I know its my outlook thats causing every trouble.

Well, Give me a break. A smile and shake of the head

Musings of a Ringworm Infected Underwear.

Inflated , Deflated.
Elated , Depressed.
Irritated , satisfied.
Boiled , spiralled out.
What more ? What next ?

Fast-paced / Flash-backward

Someone interrupts the confessions. Caught unawares, subject says she was speaking to an alarm. The alarming inability of the subject to lie straight-faced baffles me. The consequences lie in wait.

Now, I am jumping down aisles. James Bond has stepped on the gas. Quite unlike him, I finally manage to sit down on a vacant seat in the rear balcony. While all he has to worry about is existence, I've got to be wary of the ticket inspector.

I see Ganguly fend off the ball with his pads. I look at what he has scored . 32* . And suddenly it dawns on me going for the Quantum wouldn't be a bad idea. Grab the first shirt and 200 Rs.

I have a flashbang in my hands. I throw it wide out. Quite unexpectedly, I become blinded by it. I badly want to go for that gaming thinggy. I see a counter-terrorist's head poke from those crates. Didn't quite get the headshot.

The football blinks at me. Then, to my foot. A dribble and a cross aimed at no one particular. Sneer from the opposition, disappointment from mine.

Pulse races. My body oscillates. Wired to the subject responsible, through analog signals. Voices, sweet, excited, run amok.

I cross the ball, the leg gets it. Netted again. Greeted with cheers. Someone from opposition remarks ' Mark him. Else, if he gets it beyond the half, just add the tally'. I warm up to them.

Now, I think about the movie 'Memento'. I think of the scene they show the whole video running backward but the sound runs forward. How would it be if I were to put it into writing ?

Arrangements * I hate this post* *Yet Cant seem to delete it*

I thought about writing out my frustrations. Lying on top of 4 benches stacked together in lieu with a double-cot bed, I got this romantic idea of getting up and scribbling some words in the school diary. The lone window in the room displayed a sprawling green field. I awed at it not because it was beautiful, but the whole idea now seemed to be well-scripted. Here I was, alone in a fan-less class, the whole world beneath, celebrating young talents.

No, No. The whole idea of writing out the moments that I experienced before is quite difficult. You know what happened as I was lying there. I felt the urge to tell something to somebody. I didn't know who the somebody was and what to tell him/her. I got up and went over to get the pen and sat beside the window, feeling the noon sun on my face, to write. But nothing came. I was racking my head too hard, I told myself. But then I realised why nothing came. I wasn't sitting there to write, I was sitting there to advertise myself. You know, I hoped that the girls would come and see me there. But, obviously, no one did.

Infact, two of the guys did come and I hastily stacked the diary away. Writing is usually met with the same gaze that I guess only gays would have felt before. And so, I went back to lying-on-top-of-bench thinggy.
**************************
I am in the bus now. Street lights flash by. Inside, the ear is taking a beating. I want to join in the party. But the fact that I decided not to, is holding me back. You can't just scream out all of a sudden, you have to do it from the beginning.
I hear a conversation amidst all the yelps.
" Hey people, where are we ?"
"I dunno. The last I saw was Venjarammood "
" Does that mean we would reach the school in half-an-hour ? I have to inform my mother, if so."
" I guess it would take about 45 minutes from here "
" Okay. Tell me when we reach the place it becomes half-an-hour to "

Thats the only time I laugh during the journey. But dunno why :-??

**************************
"Yeah, if you haven't noticed, it's all because of you. You dragged me onto the place. You know I had no intention of coming and you know that you were the sole reason I did. And then, you run off unmindful of me."

" Sorry, what could I do to make it upto you ? "

Two minutes later, the line is disconnected.

***************************

I have to go for tutions after 3 hours. There is fear, insecurity, frustration and optimism. Well, Frustration is the leading one. I'll let you know what will come forth. Somewhere, someone would be watching Oppana feeling quite the same. Some other person, would be feeling quite the same for an entirely different reason. Some one else, would be unmindful of the fact that they would have to go on centre-stage to collect the prize of an unrelated person, who chose not to go for the prize distribution ceremony.