Neem

Sleep came over her with a vengeance.

The Clouds couldn't hold any longer, they had to let it rain. And because the wind had not let them when they wanted to, now they were going to be merciless. They brought those two fiends, Thunder and Lightning along. And a jolly loud party they had. So there's that.

But she, she just wanted to sleep. She had to. How else would she dream?

The Neem outside her window began to wail. A whiny plea for relief. What had she done now? She knew she would break with the storm. But that didn't make it any easier. An insurmountable bitterness rose through her. She shook with the wind, with anger. If only she could uproot herself and lie down on the soft pliant earth and become one again.

She heard the low patter of feet, a hush paddling towards her. Someone in the next room started clawing at the walls.

No, that was Neem. Her branches flailed at the window. She would have entered the room, had it not been for that high-quality mosquito netting. Lightning. She glowed blue in the violet night.

Someone flicked a switch on in another room. She prayed it was morning and someone had woken up. She chanced a look at the window. She could hear that clawing again. This time accompanied by sound of cracking twigs.

Had Neem really freed herself from the concrete and gone on a rampage? She was not too old, and certainly strong enough. But the Clouds were still there, lashing away at her skin and bones. And then came a deafening roar. Was it her or Thunder?

She clapped her hands over her ears and yawned widely. Exhaustion ran though her veins, the iron in her blood heavy and pulling her down. All she wanted was to sleep. But the noises never ceased. In her head and without.

The gentle drip on her window annoyed her. That tinny tip tip tip, of drops jumping from leaves and eaves into their own hasty graves, melting into mud after the fall. Torrents or drizzles, they all fell down. Descending from the clouds, sucked up by the earth. Maybe that's what kept her calm. Wish she would keep Neem still.

Neem was now sobbing uncontrollably. You could hear her heaving gasps and piercing screams. She was no longer angry, just defeated. Her breakdown seemed to have stirred them. The Clouds started showing off, wringing and emptying themselves of everything that had made them for months.

She heard it then. Someone turned on a tap. Yes, someone had woken up and was going for a bath. It must be morning. Why wouldn't the sky lighten? Does it have to play accomplice to the Clouds?? But her patience was running out. She was agitated and nervous. Some people overshoot on caffeine, she had overshot on lack of sleep. She didn't care any more. She would go to sleep.

And she dreamed. Of brides in red and white on green plains. Of clear summer days seen from under old ruins. Of goats and violins. And bells. Bells rang. They clanged against each other in merry abandon. They shined golden and tinkled. They came to her from a distance, from another far away Milky Way. The sounds pulsed inside her, blinding her million neurons. The muffled rings echoed, fell and rose again, reverberating with her bones.

She felt breathless. Water flooded her. The alarm rang somewhere within the deep ocean in which she was floating, perhaps sinking. She didn't know how to swim. She had forgotten how to. She kicked furiously at the entangled bed covers. But she couldn't see anything beyond green. Rain and Neem were drowning her.

Swiping and swinging her arms blindly, she caught hold of steel. The cold numbed her fingers, the soft breeze biting her skin. With a huge push and rush, she came up to her window. With an effort that almost crippled her, she slid the horrible grimy net away.

And there she was. Neem. Lying on the cold gray street. Broken down, bruised. Stripped naked of her shame, beaten by million sharp needles, shoved and jostled by haughty currents. Her roots were still deep inside. Seemed like she had not been able to make up her mind. Was that why she had suffered this? Was she dead now? Worse, she had fallen. Between a restless sleep and uncertain awakening. 

There was no sign of the Clouds. They had moved on. Emptying and collecting themselves on the way.

Emergence

I didn’t want to get out. Didn’t see no reason to. I was safe inside, warm and comfortable. It was akin to being in a suspended state of dream and sleep, that gray area of subconscious and conscious. At times, it got slightly claustrophobic. But one gets over that when one looks at the burden-less existence inside. The protection is only cherished.

I felt I had everything I needed here. I had vague distant memories which seemed to have been born very recently. Before that, I don’t remember. Maybe there was nothing. Maybe, I was nothing. Now, I can feel what is happening within and around me, despite my inability to make any sense out of it.

At times, despite all my attempts, the world outside turns to affect me. Those moments are earth quakes, shaking me up, ruining the arrangement of things inside. The noises would be even louder, leaving small reverberations for a long time. Then it would take me days to settle back into the calm peace of this place and relax.

I think my walls have ears. They can hear everything that I have on my mind, or rather feel it. Even I could feel it at times. When I’d be nervous or high-strung, it would seem that the walls around were constricting and thudding with a dangerous beat. And at times, I could feel a slight shiver and tingling run across them, imbuing me with that same light-headed feeling. The word for that feeling was happy. Else, the rest of the time, I felt warm, safe and comfortable; and the word for these together can only be content. That constant bubble was perturbed from time to time by the place outside, with its people and rush and excesses.

I could sense that they wanted me to leave. The feeling of claustrophobia overtook me more often, but I’d still manage to get over those. I didn’t want to leave. I saw no reason to leave.

Till it was time. Till my walls evicted me. Those hours were the most difficult hours of my short-lived life within. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t turn inside to look. I couldn’t sink back into the soft beating of my heart and slight thumping of those walls. No longer was I able to curl up into myself and fall asleep.

With a great heave and a cry, I was out. Out there, naked and gasping for air, uttering an agitated cry for being thrown out of my own place. I opened my eyes to find bright blurred lights shining from behind huge faces and heads.

I was outside. I became an outsider then. There was only one thing connecting me to my way inside. Could I have gone back? After they cut the cord, I knew the answer to that was never. In my later years, I would go on to say that that was the first bruise life gave me.

Photo by: Sans.ability

And there was a girl..

The song played and some others followed. She knew they were meaningless. Real life didn't sound like that. In real life you couldn't say things that were meaningful and sounded beautiful, at the same time.

She looked up and saw him.She could see the blue sky as it was meant to be, the green leaves as the tree wanted them to be and the flowers, red and yellow as spring made them to be. But then he was there, smiling at her, lying to himself. She saw through him and was surprised at herself. She wondered how she could allow herself to be swept and taken away. She convinced herself that this was meant to be.And she let another song creep in and feed her fancies.

For a time that lasted months, almost melting into an year, she didn't want to think of anything else. It was a fever that burned and turned short bursts of passion into promises. She learned to flow along a wave that never settled on calm. There were ebbs of happiness and grief which only made her want more of it. It made her feel alive, or so she felt.

Before autumn could arrive, it was over. She didn't want to cry. She didn't need to. There was nothing left to cry over. And that's why she cried. She felt weak and ashamed. She let others walk away. She cried and let the world drown, let those abandoned float away.

Over those hours and days spent, there was an old box full of sharp, raw memories, discarded, once-exchanged belongings, a bottle of bitterness and a playlist of instances and associations. Every song had a memory to it. Every memory had a scent to it. Every scent had a sting, of a sharp dull ache that comes with missing.

Closure was a rigmarole of justifications, of surrender, of acceptance and of fighting hopes. It was a journey of extricating a meaning out of all said and done, of chopping of associations, of relegating meaninglessness to those songs again, of erasing a canvas smeared with past wishes and false impressions of the future.

As she looked into the mirror and saw herself, she knew she was already beginning to diminish. She could see her walls plastered with crumpling, faded posters and shelves lined with dusty relics and framed photographs. The mirror, like a murky gray ocean, was reluctant to part away with a reflection. The sun rays merely drowned, not surfacing.

The song that came on, came out slow, hushed and garbled in a way. She knew it meant nothing and thanked the time where she would let it slip by. Life had to allow for some things to go unnoticed, for tiny fallacies to be brushed away. She moved away from the mirror and fell back on her bed. Softly, with a noise that would come close to flump. Fingers curled and pointing skywards, eyelids closed, full with sleep or tears one couldn't know. She breathed with a calm and told herself that this didn't mean anything, that memories can be thrown away like an un-welcome guest. She smiled to herself, knowing she was getting good at lying to herself.

She tripped on denial and fell into her dreams. Again.

An ordinary life

The heat was unbearable. The flame licked around and the blow was hard. And all their attempts to strengthen me by tempering and annealing only added to the agony. If my birth was such an ordeal, I wondered how difficult my life would be.

I’ve been here for some years now. Being the centre of attention for thirteen seconds in someone’s life isn’t that big an achievement, but I get by. There are times when some would be generous enough to spare me an entire minute from their life. Those come by, and come by few.

Today seems to be an inauspicious day. I can feel it within. There are too many people around, too many casual glances thrown at me. I never fancy such attention, callous and capricious. You know they don’t really want to be looking at you. You just happen to be in their line of vision.

One of them seemed to be different. He spoke to the mistress, said he found something intriguing about me. My mistress easily let him take me away. I didn’t feel particularly hurt, but a hint of sadness inevitably marked me. I had after all spent some years under her watchful eyes.

Once he got me, he didn’t seem to care much. He’d leave me in a corner, where no one came, no one in whose line of vision you could fall for mere acknowledgment of your existence. Dust had begun to settle on me like a shroud. The darkness was blinding.

Then one day he came back in drunken rage and fought with the wife. He picked me up with vehement force and threw me down. And that was my sudden, forgettable and absurd demise. The wife stepped on broken pieces of me and let out a scream. I’d made her bleed.

He forgot all about his rage. He rushed to her and went about tending to her. No one cared for the intriguing beauty that was now on the floor, broken. Most of me ground to dust. The maid was asked to sweep away the broken shards, the remains of my featureless form.

They thought about putting me together, but gave up on second thoughts. I was anyways in no shape for attention and effort. No point crying over shattered glass. The baby in the other room had started crying by then, too late for any repair now.