PAINEMBER

they tell you,

alcohol is addictive

it kills you slow.

they say,

drugs

destroy you,

drives you crazy.

religion,

is for the fanatics,

and i am not one.

and suicide, they say

is for cowards

though everyone

is afraid of death.

i have just one question.

when music

makes me fight

memories i need to forget

when i drive

and miss

the other hand on the gearknob,

holding mine

when i eat

and cant see

those stifled giggles

on how i lick my plate

when i write

on the sand

my name beside her's

and watch helplessly

as the sea

swallows a dream alive

time after time

when i crave

that head on my chest,

the breath on my neck,

the taste of her cracked lips

that strand of hair

to tuck behind her ear

answer me.

tell me how.

give me a way

to numb the pain

to not to remember

a life lost.

show me how

to forget

love.

(image: water colour by gaya)

without you

I am afraid

to look by my side

where you always used to be.

i cant bear

to look back

and be haunted

by everything

we left behind

like a racing horse,

i am doomed

to look forward

to stare at

the loneliness

the emptiness that awaits.

and now

all i really want

is to sleep

to sleep deep

and never open my eyes again,

and never wake up

to knowing

i am without you.

25

I know a man

Who always wears a ray ban.

Who was expelled from his college.
For being a hippie and not cutting his hair.

Who sings the most absurd version
Of “mere angane mein” you will ever hear.

Who loves brazil,sachin,federer , arsenal
Not necessarily in that order.

Who reads 4 newspapers a day,
A diehard congressman ,
And an authority on kerala politics.

Who will never agree
Mammootty is a great actor.

Who will talk eloquently
On things he knows everything
And things he knows absolute nothing about.

I know a woman

Who traveled 180 km
In a crowded train
The day before she delivered her firstborn.

Who used to make 4 different breakfasts
and then go to work,
Before those ad companies said it was possible.

Who will never admit
She likes to watch those tv serials.

Who likes fishheads
And to finger lick her plates

Who makes the bestest fish curries.

Whose coastal accent appears out of nowhere
Whenever she reaches her native place.

Who wants her son to come home to sleep
Even if that means
She has to open the doors at 3am.

The man , who prides himself on knowing a bit about everythig,
Silently wishes he knew more about his introvert son.
The woman hopes her son goes to church more often.

they had nothing in common
attitude.lifestyle.tastes.interests.nothing.
yet 25 years ago,
on this day ,
they set sail together.
Somewhere along the way
They first carried someone
Then taught him to walk
And to run.
Once he started running,
He often forgot to look back.
Forgot they could not always catch up.

I am sorry.

Happy 25th anniversary mom and dad.
Love you .

break up

We stood
face to face
eyes locked,
thoughts shared,
For an eternity.

But i was not aware
that between us,
Bricks,
were slowly taking shape into
A stubborn wall.

From below upwards,
the wall climbed high
reached my eyeline
and hid your deep eyes from me.

But even then,
for long,
I kept staring
hoping , someday
I will see you through the wall.

But then,
In a moment of infinite transparency,
I knew
that someone had been on the other side,
held your hand ,
and walked away with you,
even as you too
had your neck turned ,
your eyes fixed on the wall.

I punched the wall,
till my knuckles smashed
I clawed on it
till my nails were ground to dust.
I kicked on it,
I broke my knees
and crushed my feet
I bit
and lost my teeth.

I banged my head on the wall,
perhaps just to forget,
But I could not
the wall still stood tall.
and I bled.

And now,
Reduced
to a heap of shapeless brokenness,
I have to crawl,
away
from the wall.
Away,
from where you were.

Good bye,
to you,
and the space that were you.

back in action.

i dont know if there is anyone out there who really cares about this tiny bit of web space, but i dont really care if anyone cares. it has been dormant for over a year now, and i intend to inject some life into it, as much life as my inherently lazy self and killing schedule permits. good luck to me..

REVIEW:: RITU

Shyamaprasad may be swapping tequila shots for a fruit cocktail in his new film Ritu, but no, I am not complaining.


Shyamaprasad loves his literature. At one point in Ore kadal, Bela (Remya Krishnan) makes a passing remark to Nathan (mammooty) about how, in Jayadevan’s Geetagovindam there is a mention of the wounds of love left by Radha on Sri Krishna’s body. Invoking this piece of ancient literature was hardly coincidental; as the film was a crazily crafted exploration of the radhakrishna legend. The film to a great extent followed that missing chapter – what happened to radha after Krishna left her- and blossomed it into a brilliant film on love, passion and literally, all the madness that comes with it.

In Ritu, he uses the exact same pointing device to give a synopsis of what he wants to narrate, though here, the markers are much more accessible. First, there is a very much visible reference to Iago of Othello, with an added monologue on betrayal, immediately after a protagonist is subject to an act of treachery. Throughout the film, there is a shadow of Iago’s green eyed monster in the interplay between the three protagonists. The innocent friendship of yesterday has given way to an invisible separation of jealousy, and it is the primary emotion that drives the people in this movie to their various actions. And Shyamaprasad captures beautifully the subsequent tension that this shadow creates in the claustrophobic spaces of IT company cubicles. this is made all the more difficult as he is not working with seasoned actors, who may more easily be able to convey understated emotions via a mere look or a subtle change in body language. Yet with careful composition of scenes and some deft handling of the debutantes, he is able to construct those emotions with minimal dialogues. In fact, in a way, the visuals-which by far overpower the conversations, are what you take away from the film. And this jealousy is by no means one dimensional, it is etched out in a highly subjective manner – while for the much more yuppie Sunny it is purely professional and all about his career, for Sharat , who is more of an old world, romantic youth, jealousy is all Shakespeare-an.

But while Othello forms the body, or better the atmosphere of the movie, the soul is referenced in the other literary work that finds a mention - Fernando Pessoa’s the book of disquiet, where he interprets the theory “‘I’ contain multitudes”. There are multiple ‘me’s within me. That is the journey that Sharat makes in the film, discovering a new facet of himself that he never realized was there inside. He arrives into his old group of friends awkwardly stuck up in a set of yesterdays, only to find out that the people in those yesterdays have moved on. Yet by the end of the film, it is Sharat who is well and truly able to make a clean break from his past. The wavelength of his relationships is suffocatingly idealistic. He is your quintessential straightforward nice guy, always empathetic, overtly sensitive. Yet when he realizes his commitment is hardly reciprocated, his course of action is not of masculine confrontation or despairing resignation, but it is one of a scheming mastermind. How he exposes sunny is quite evident, but what may escape the eye, and more significant to establish Sharat as a character is how he schemes and toys with the emotions of Varsha, again tapping into that atmosphere of jealousy integrated into the film, to get her to bed, to achieve what could only be called a revenge, and which she is made to mistake as an act of forgiveness. This act of betrayal is really the pivotal point of the film, as this is where the various elements of the movie comes together in one piece,and this is where Sharat truly gets over his past. One cannot help wondering if those portions where staged with the emphasis that was deserved.

All this theorizing may give the impression of a complex emotional potboiler, but Ritu is very much a light move. But how this lightness is defined is relative- it is a Shyamaprasad light movie and not a Priyadarsan one. The movie is pitched as a fresh take on youth, and fresh it is in a lot of ways. Most movies labeled as youth movies can be defined by just the word “LOUD”- both in colour, sound and narrative. Ritu carefully stays clear of this tedious approach. It unfolds at a mature pace, and the film has a very watered down look to it- the dominant colour here is an ashen grey (look out for the colouring of Sharat’s shirts) as if to highlight the point that both morally as well as emotionally our lives are mostly a middle of the road abstract grey, rather than a concrete black or white. Ritu stays away from any sort of nauseating melodrama, and the treatment is very much contemporary.The casting is appropriate, and the actors turn in a bit strained, yet very convincing performances. Yet, some of the caricaturing is essentially old school- like how the characters of the three friends is a laid out as a direct consequence of what their families are and where. Some of these die hard old habits are the weakest parts of the film, when the movie tries to incorporate social commentaries into the narrative – a side story about a man who lost his land when technopark was built, another one about the absence of a fulfilling family life among the corporate big shots. One can’t help wishing the valuable time and space devoted there was employed to portrait the central characters in more depth; especially sunny. Sunny is the most negative of the trio, yet his is an interesting mix, at times there are some genuine hints of sincerity, and there is also a strange mention regarding sexuality – that raises a million questions that are never answered. Shyamaprasad may have been taking his notion of making a light film a little too seriously or perhaps he was having a hang over from the intense study that was ore kadal, whatever it was, there is a reluctance to really push hard and delve into the complexities of his characters. This seeming lack of depth is not helped by an average background score. For Shyamaprasad’s craft derives a lot of inspiration from music, both in Akale and Ore kadal the music was used brilliantly used to provide a unique texture to the medium. Rahul raj’s background score is not bad, but his understanding of the situations of the movie leaves a lot to be desired and as a result, the music fails to add anything significant to our appreciation of the film (and at times, it irritatingly interferes).

It is this laid back approach that, perhaps, made me exit from the movie hall with a feeling of wanting more. No, it’s not fair to make comparisons always, and Ritu works fine on its own. No, I am not at all complaining about Shyamaprasad taking some time to just chill out. Yes, Ritu certainly has vignettes that leave you salivating. But I will certainly wait eagerly for a work for which he will have to sweat some blood.

TRANSITIONS

Form the dark nights
To the grey dawns
Into the yellow mornings

I have always loved transitions.

From lead pencils
To fountain pens
To keyboards

From cradles
To shoulders
To fingers to legs to wheels

From my class seventh shorts
To my class eighth pants

From hugs and kisses
To archies cards
To Oh god, I forgots

From the torrents
To the drizzles
Into rainbows and sunny skies.

From tom and jerrys
To blood booze and bodies
And back to tom and jerrys

From infatuations
To cravings and frustrations
To love

From loneliness to
Loneliness
To loneliness.

10/16/2008 3:11:15 AM

MASTER CARD

You gotta stand up straight
Carry your own weight
Those tears are going nowhere
You got to
Get yourself together
You got stuck in a moment
And now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that
Later will be better
Now you are stuck in a moment
And you can’t
Get out of it

U2

For the lack of better names, in my vocabulary at least; let’s call it a ‘jingler’. And the jingler was a kid’s toy made of plastic, pink in colour, shaped like a micro version of a cricket bat. The inside of it was hollow, with a lot of small, circular steel plates arranged in stacks so that whenever you shook it, it made a sound that may perhaps be better described a rattle, but I like to stick to jingle, since it was much sweeter than what you associate with a rattle. And so, jingler.

I must have been about ten then. My uncle had bought a plot nearby my house, and we had some tapioca planted there, and I was given the tedious job of drawing water from a nearby well and watering them. I dint bother about it much then, of course the ever lazy me was working on an alternate basis; half the plants today, other half next day. Still, in two days I used to do as much exercise as I have done in last 3 months.

My sister, molu was about 7. And apart from an assortment of dolls, the jingler was one of her toys. I don’t exactly remember which uncle gave her the jingler. She was not very interested in it at first, and it lay in some corner; forgotten and gathering dust. Then one day I found it, due to its resemblance to the cricket bat more than anything else, and I started using it to play my imaginary boundaries and sixes and my imitations of sachin. And each time I played a cover drive or pull shot in the air, there was that sound, much to my annoyance. But that must have been what caught her attention. There is a thing about little sisters - they may be least interested in something, but as soon as you pick it up and they see it in your hands, it becomes the only thing in the world they want. And of course, as all elder brothers are always fated to. I had to give it to her. I didn’t make as much fuss about it as I usually would have done; it was too small for me anyway.

From then on it became a part of her, to say the least. The doll ammu/divya/maya (same doll, but I remember the names used to change on an hourly basis and these three were the usual. After all, dolls don’t grow up, and so every day they have to be reborn as someone different. And of course, with different make ups.) was already a part of her, cuddled in her right hand wherever she went. And with the jingler, which had a convenient cricket bat handle for her little fingers to grip on, she found something finally to hold on to her left. It was always nice to watch her if she had to use her hands for something else - she would place her doll and the jingler somewhere safe with as much care as my mom would have took while putting her in the cradle. I call it a jingler, but she never was interested in making any sounds with it at all. But it was always, always there, tightly held in her little left hand.

And then, this one day when I was going to the tapioca plot, she scooted along. While I watered the plants, she played in her own world, talking to herself and showing whatever she found amusing in the world around her to ammu (?). But after sometime, she started watching me closely. She came by the well and seemed quite interested with how was I drawing water. That was when I, who has always been obsessed with impressing people, had this brain wave.

“Let me show you something”

A curious questioning look.

“I will put this thing in the well and get it back for you”

I threw a leaf into the well and then with the bucket got it back. Her beaming smile encouraged me, and the leaf was soon followed by a plastic ball I had brought, some things that were scattered around the place like coconut husk, paper bits and so on. With each item, my confidence grew and her curiosity level decreased. That was when I decided to go be a bit more daring.

“Let’s give ammu a bath in the well”

She seemed doubtful, but I stripped the doll, threw it into the water and got it back.

Next my eyes were on the jingler.

She was a bit more doubtful.

And her brother, still not fully informed of the practical aspects of principals of buoyancy, threw it confidently into the well. .

And it sank.
Slowly, after bobbing up and down for once or twice,
It S-A-N-K.

“Athenthina angottitte?”
(Why did you put it there?)

Inside a ten year old’s rib cage;
Something else sank as well.
And sinks to this day, every time I remember the jingler.
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I may be filthy rich one day.
I could buy her Gucci or Vuitton or Prada.

But until I can bring back that little pink toy from the depths of a well that no longer exists , there will always a debt left unpaid.

BLESSED

Celebrated singer of yesteryears s janaki in an interview:


“Janaki enna oru aal illai. Only the singer. Pirannathe padikondu. Paadikonde irikkum. Irikkum vare paadum. Paadum vare irikkum.”
(There is no person or individual called janaki. Only the singer. I have been singing since I was born. And I have been continuing singing. I will sing as long as I live. And I will live as long as I live.”)


I think such people are the luckiest. No doubts about what to do in life. No second thoughts about with what to do with life. And absolutely no identity crisis.

SWEETER THAN A DREAM

Once,
An early morning dream
A sweet, delightful one,
Became cross with me...
He woke me up,
In the middle of a dream
Hoping,
I would miss him
And close my eyes
And beg him to complete
And so he left me
In the middle of somewhere beautiful
And kept on watching
Eager to see my plight

But to his dismay,
He was defeated, surprised..
As he saw me happier
Than he could ever make me
More content
Than he had ever seen me

And when he looked why
That was when he saw
You in my arms
In my embrace

Green with envy
He realized
That I had woken up
Only to feel you within my arms
And for me, having you by my side
Having your head on my chest
Was more precious
More delightful
Than anything he had become
To anyone…

SOUNDS OF SILENCE

SILENCE


Roaring

Screaming

Ripping

Weeping

Groaning

Moaning

Thumping


SILENCE

WAKE ME UP

The weakness inside me
Makes me flee
From anyone I love
And when I do that
I am left with no choice

I am bound to waste my love
On people I am supposed to hate
Would I go to heaven for that?

Wake me up, my love
From my indifferent slumber
I had rather burn to death in love
Than die a boring death in my sleep.

BE WITH ME

I want your shadow
Beside mine
When I walk the sands
This orange sunset

I want you to live
In my dreams and my hopes
Sharing the truths and the lies
The light and the dark

I want you to be
My tune and my rhyme
My tenor and timbre
When my voice crack
Singing the songs of my life

And when I die
And end up in some corner of the sky
I will wait
For you to be
Beside me
And as always,
Outshine me.

morning sickness

I hate it when I wake up wide awake in some early mornings.
Because they bring with them a fear, sadness, that I dread the most........................................
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Some days I wake up early,
Suddenly
Without the shrieks of the alarm
Unasked for
At 4.
And the silence
Makes me remember
All that I have lost.
All that never can I regain.
Everything
That I missed out on.

The floodgates open
Those doors of my mind
that I have closed
and sealed
and plastered
as much as I can
are pushed wide apart.

It reminds me
all that I wanted to be
and never could be
or has been yet.

It fills me with a certainty
That the worst
Is still waiting
To hitchhike on your life.

There is a queer feeling in the chest.
I sweat.
I weep.
I bang my fist into the pillow.
I kneel,
And I pray,
O god please let me fall back asleep.

DRENCHED MUSINGS

The night rain is hiding
Behind a dark veil
But I can
Hear the dancing feet
Smell the fragrance
Of fulfilled love
Feel the cold kisses
Across a blanket of sweat
And see the colourless collages
Made on the window pane.

* * * * * * * *

When it rains
In the narrow spaces between the walls
Through the fume filled suffocation
Of the city streets
Among myriads of men and women
When the rain squeezes through
Between my outstretched fingers
Between the dense leaves of the tree in the courtyard
I can’t help wondering
What if
The rain was claustrophobic?
* * * * * * * *

I love the rain
When his tempo wanes
When his fury has begun to recede
When I can hear
His deep laboured breaths
His gasps of exhaustion
After having made frantic love
With his mate, lady earth
After having sown his seeds
In her sacred, infinite, womb.

TINNITUS

Everything started with a ringing sound in his left ear. Being a medical student, he knew it was called tinnitus and probably would have described the case as a continuous humming sound, present at all times, especially when the surroundings were quite. No difficulty in sleeping, and no complaints of decrease in hearing and no associated history of vertigo. He never felt disturbed by the tinnitus, and at first attributed it to his newly acquired habit of spending long times listening to heavy metal and trance music on his ipod.

Soon, the sound became an invisible presence in his life. He was never consciously aware of it, but whenever someone suddenly switched off the fan in the room, or when the power went off suddenly at 3 in the night, or when a madam walked into the class ending the chirpy chattering-whenever silence came to his life uncalled for, he woke up to the knowledge of that something in his ears.

Since it wasn’t giving him any trouble whatsoever, he ignored it for as long as he could. But he had made the mistake of telling about it to his girlfriend. And when her perpetual paranoia and concern became more nagging than the actual tinnitus itself, he decided to see a doctor.

He went to op one day, and picked out a madam who felt was most approachable. She examined and said he had impacted wax, which of course was the first possibility that he had seen in his ENT text. Yet he was a little disappointed-impacted wax wasn’t the most stylish condition for him to say he had.

He used smelly drops for a week to soften the wax and had it removed. After the syringing, he closed his left ear with his finger for a moment to see if the sound had gone.

So that diagnosis was ruled out. He may get something stylish to lay claim to after all. That lead to a long lay off- madam prescribed a tablet and some tests to be done within a week- which, thanks to his inherent laziness and a series of university exams- he did in about 2 months. He went for review after another one month.
No point in prolonging in listing out the whole battery of tests he had to undergo since then. The final statement being he was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of intracranial tumour with a particularly bad prognosis. The doctors advised aggressive management procedures from a better centre.

It didn’t shatter him. What he felt was a deep sense of urgency, an obsession for all the things he wanted to do with his life and could have done and was undone. He had kept his friends and family in the dark about his condition; and at a later stage, while he had no choice but to involve his family, he still dint disclose it to his friends at college. The last thing he wanted was to miss all the fun that his friendships had to offer; to get all the fireworks soaked in sympathy. And also, he thought; if he were to go out, better go out with a bang.

Lying was one thing he was really good at. So he made up a nice little story about getting a great opportunity to go abroad; he left for a cancer centre for treatment, which the doctors had already told him, was always going to be more palliative than curative.

That was when he started writing. Equipped with a new laptop,(one thing that always put him off about writing was the mess that usually papers, pens and ink created) he started typing out his thoughts and observations, his take on life and contemporary issues and some very weirdly personal form of what could be called poetry. He had always believed himself to be reasonably good with words, and very often he had a clear picture of what to write, which he invariably used to put off for later. Left with a realization that he had no substantial body of work behind him to prove a talent, which he believed he had, and with a desire to leave a little imprint of his on something, somewhere, let alone a legacy, he started writing. Righting voraciously.

But getting people to read what he was writing was a problem. He wanted his work to be tested accepted and proven. That was when he discovered blogging. He created a blog for himself; but for some time the blog itself threatened to bring him down, the deserted comments section proving to be a periodic source of depression. But that was only until, through some sheer luck, his blog caught the eye of some of the top brass of the blogosphere.

To be frank his writing was by and large mediocre, or just above what you would call average. But one thing he did right was that, he had not revealed his true identity and had in fact revealed his medical condition and that he was dying. Let’s face it; most of the people are squealers when it comes to sentiments of a dying person death. And add to that the mystery factor of his identity; his blogs became an overnight rage. His writings began to be interpreted as ‘the voice of eternal hope’ and ‘the words of a boy’s never ending struggle with death and pain’ and so on. People read his posts with misty eyes and soon he was commanding the sympathy, admiration and prayers of thousands he had never met or heard. Thousands bookmarked his URL refreshed his web page every hour to catch his posts. He was well and truly leaving a thumbprint behind.

And then, one silent night, he died.In sleep.

To say shocked would have been an understatement. No one apart from the closest of his family had been informed about his disease, and when people came to know someone had been dying for months; what they felt was beyond the scope of any description. At his funeral, which was one of the biggest his place had ever seen, everyone was remembering only good things about him, some of them, before that day, even he would not have been aware of or believed he had. They frantically groped through the cluttered attics of their memories to find a moment, a smile or anything at all, they had shared with him. They also paused a moment to think of everyone they ever shared a moment with, to appreciate how precious they were; how precious their own lives where. There was so much love in the air; so much love that it easily eclipsed what they had ever given to him in his very short life.
And at the v shaped end of a pentagonal wooden box, someone was grinning widely. He had played those last few cards really well…
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About 6 months back I picked up a habit of hearing to heavy metal on my ipod.
About 4 months back I started having a ringing sound in my ear.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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The rest happened somewhere in between panophthalmitis an evisceration while preparing for my ophthalmology exams.
In a bubble above my head.

SHADOWS

SHADOWS

Shadows
My shadows
My shadows in the darkness
Long and short, they pace along
Pausing
Just for a moment everyday
To watch each other

My shadows in the darkness.

They sprout from my feet
And look back upon me
With an indifferent gaze;
Sometimes
It has a smirk on its face
A nasty, arrogant grin
Of someone who knows
I want to, but never will
Get rid of him.

Shadows.
My shadows in the darkness.

I get drenched
In stormy downpours
But they always remain
Dry and warm.
I sweat and swear
In scalding heat
But they always manage
To remain calm.
I tried counting them,
And got bored with numbers.

Then I decided
May be should learn
To live with,
To fall in love with
My unforgiving shadows.
And so I bent down
To kiss them
To hug them
And this time
They were no longer there.
They vanished into thin air.

Still,
The defeat was solely mine.

APPREHENSION- (final year chronicles 1 )

First day of the final year.
Finally we are the LORDS of the jungle.
No one to show any consideration to.
Not that we have been giving anyone anything. But still somewhere
it feels nice to know I can horse around with pretty much
anyone I am going to come across in college.
Again, not that I will actually do it... :-)
But when I pause for a moment and take stock,
that arrogance is not really what I feel. Somewhere
at the back of your mind you slowly realize it’s the beginning
of the end of a transition, a transition from always being cared
to the carefree to the ones who should care. The progression from always
having someone to live for you to having to slip your life
out of your hands to someone else, to begin to live for
someone else who is not yet there.
Nostalgia aside, life hasn’t changed much.
Serious? Mature? No for sure. Hard work? Don’t even think of it.
Boredom? The class rooms, classrooms still manage to define the word.
Fun? Friendship? Films? YEAH!!!
Yet, when you close your eyes to all that; take a deep breath
and look ahead, I guess the feeling really is one of
APPREHENSION.
P.S. I have a foreboding, that final year is also going to be
synonymous with something else. A new brand of embarrassment-
you know” you are in final year and you don’t know this? Where were
you all these years?” kind of thing. But not surprisingly, and not
the least because I know anything at all,
it’s the last thing I am apprehensive about…
26-9-08 00:25

hi everyone

hello..

when my dad decided to name me Nirmal,
a friend asked him what if i dint live up to my name.

his words were prophetic i guess.
because my life hasnt been that pure.
not that i care.as long as i have fun.

and nth dimension is a chronicle of my impure little life for you.

and also my my take of the world arround me in my dimension,
which i hope , will be an nth one.

welcome to you all
to my little world of words....