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.

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.

Cold Fusion

The cursor kept blinking back at me, insistent, like a mother asking you to tidy up the room. I looked blankly at the screen, pained by the empty white space challenging me. It's not that I had nothing to say, it's just that I had too much and these creatures in my head were waging a war against the walls of my brain. If I didn't do anything about them now, they would start making noises and oozing out of my mouth and that would be a very dangerous thing.

I must tell you about this fear I have of said, uttered and spoken. If anything goes through these three, then the results can be overwhelming at times. What if what was said, uttered or spoken turned out to be true and ruptured that false sense of security you had wrapped around you? These creatures have very sharp claws, I must warn you and they are an unruly bunch. They won't care two hoots before cutting down your heart and hopes into pieces and proceeding to self-destruct.

I don't know where my brain picked these creatures from, from which crazy god-forsaken corner.

It is at such times, when I'm at the brink of a nuclear war in my head and my fingers freeze in their cold war with my brain, that I feel the need to go for a walk. A walk won't necessarily stop the churning within, but it would help me get away from the burden of controlling it. I can just let these creatures do their thing inside, while my feet trace and retrace steps in an aimless wandering about the house. This sometimes leads to more chaos. The walls start screaming and shoving another set of creatures into my head.

And those creatures are even worse. I don't know whether they are alive or dead. If you mention, think, imagine or just even bring them up, they become the past, gone, and yet just hanging there. It is as if their lifespan runs on a clock whose each tick overlaps with the next so that a tick begins and ends together leading to the next one's immediate and simultaneous birth and death. If you had the living, the dead and the ghosts amongst us humans, then those creatures would fittingly fall within the ghosts.Those creatures would infest you and lie low and suddenly sneak up on you and unsettle everything. They can and will plague your head and rouse all these sleeping creatures into a riot of expression.

At times I wish to purge myself of all the creatures within, these thriving and kicking ones, and those haunting and tormenting ones. But it's like the Stockholm syndrome.. the creatures have started liking my brain. They have started liking me, my self and everything about and around and they refuse to leave. They fill me up. Every time I open my eyes, breathe, smell, feel, sigh , utter, they multiply. The unborn ones are waiting for a flick of light within and they shall start their own universe within. Imagine the Big Bang occurring every living tick on your clock in your head. More the explosions in my head, the more I do things that will create more of such creatures.

It is a vicious circle. I am them!! I have become what they are, whatever they are at any given time. I become their rag, and their pen. They can write me down on my own self and leave me to erase the marks. And each wiped out impression joins the army of those creatures, ambles off to a dark recess within, only to creep out teasingly from time to time and madden me. With the frothing madness comes a wave of intoxication that sweeps these creatures into a blur of excitement. And out they come spilling..

The cursor's still annoying me with that blinking. The empty white spaces have shrunk and given away to inert black ants on the screen. They seem to be a handful. I don't know where my brain's picking up creatures from again, from which god-forsaken ruddy place now!!!