Waiting to Become

Sometimes I feel as if I am waiting to become

as a bud may wait through winter to flower

or a shooting star still in a night-filled sky

waits for its moment to blaze a meteor-shower.

And pent up inside me a creator waits to pounce

on a thought, a word, a theory to propound -

Long years has it borne ennui and self-distrust,

lived still and breathed in darkness profound.

At times like a chained beast it rattles the shutters

that keep its light from shining through;

Gnashing teeth and gnawing at iron shackles,

it howls its angst at such imprisonment too.

But sometimes for an ephemeral eon it flies -

Soaring and glorying in infinite, empyreal skies.

When the Demons Gnaw

Sometimes, if you have been around thoughts of death a lot, you grow indifferent to the point of apathy towards it: perhaps you feel that in any case in the larger cosmic context, nothing can really save your life. And maybe then the indifference or apathy doesn't spring from callous desensitization or anaesthetized horror but from the calm acceptance that no one can escape this moment of truth. You can escape being born but once born there really is no way to avoid death forever.

So, of course, I toyed with the idea of death -- suicide, murder, flying off a building without wings, slow poison -- the range, you know, when the prisoner knows really no other way of escaping the psychopath holding her puppet strings. Well, don't judge me, will you, please?

By the way, I've been meaning to ask you about that white lab coat you have on -- why do you wear it? You're not a real scientist anyway - just a shrink!

They called it a pseudoscience when I wanted to take it up in college. Oh, and btw, you have a spot on that collar… no, the right collar… yes, there it is… could you wash it out, please? It really bothers me. Makes me smell that stale smell which makes me nauseous. What? I shouldn't be able to smell anything through this thick glass, eh? Why not? Well, I CAN. And it reminds me of HIM…

Ah, yes, you want to know that story, do you? You would. Shrinks are so voyeuristic; did you ever realize that? Oh no, no, not in the sexual sense - HE was that! A sex freak and a voyeur, one of the sinister people my mother constantly warned me about. Of course, I didn't believe her for a second! Would you have, if you had grown up with chocolatey boys and girls, kids of highly intellectual people who taught for a living? No, I guess not. The worst thing that happened to us as kids was the occasional adult pervert who felt us up. Not our uncles and aunts or even friendly neighbourhood professors -- but the incidental chowkidar, the swimming instructor, the piano teacher -- those sorts of people….

Am I raving? Aren't shrinks not supposed to judge? Ah yes, you're not here to shrink me. A "psychological assessment" they called it -- to ascertain without a doubt whether I am sane enough to stand trial.

Well, that does raise so many questions at so many levels now, doesn't it?

Is anyone ever completely sane? To what extent can anyone BE completely sane? Yes, I loved theory of knowledge from the moment I met it! There was something so vast and open about it; you could question knowledge itself! You could say, "Why should I believe that?" and keep searching for the answer till you got one that satisfied you. And then look for the next answer… so vast… so open… unconfined to little boxes with ribbons on top.

Box. Ah yes, the psychopath and the box he kept me in. For weeks there was just a chatai on the floor -- you'd think that was the hardest part but it wasn't. I was used to the simple life. But take my advice, would you? If you're ever having sex on a chatai don't let him get on top… or her, though it's different between two women… You blushing? Seriously? How old ARE you?

He would've liked you. He liked fresh-faced innocent girls with a propensity for gullibility. What drew him to me, you wonder, don't you? I think it was the safety and security of someone with intellect. Someone as gullible as the next girl too. Like I said, chocolatey boys and girls don't quite prepare you for psychopaths. I should've listened to my mother but I knew she was faffing; just trying to keep me out of "trouble". What did she know about psychopaths anyway?

So, yes, returning to the narrative, which is what you are here for, there was this box, a flat without a fan, without furniture, without a single pot or pan… I bought everything for it down to the last spoon. Spent several months of the pittance I got. Boy, how he cleaned up my bank account while he kept his money for booze or for his family.

Jeez, this story sounds like so many I've seen on the screen. Almost unbelievable, right? But I have the scars to show for them. Not all the scars are visible, of course -- I'm pretty sure he cracked one of my four cracked ribs but it could've been the other guy -- but that's another story and that guy's still alive.

But tell me, little shrink, why was I such a BLOODY victim? Well, wonder away. When my friends ask, "Why did you allow him to do that to you?" I want to laugh, you know! No one allows herself to be bullied and beaten and battered. But sometimes I do wonder if I could have escaped. When the demon memories gnaw and rage inside me I create these scenarios, think back on those chances that I could've taken but… there were no alternative realities. I had hardly any money and absolutely no one on my side of the rink. Just some fantasies in which at least one of us ended up dead.

Especially when he put on porn. Sick, sick porn, unimaginably sick. I would feign sleep just to be able to shut out that crap. He watched everything; but the one that really freaked me out had this young girl who was crying, her eye liner smudging wet cheeks, creating black tracks down unmarked skin.

It got to me so bad that I locked myself in the loo and tried to cut my wrists with a razor. Don't try it, ever. Those bloody safety razors are no bloody good. They hurt like the dickens without cutting deep enough. But that child's face, dear god, that child was real, not an actor in a carefully orchestrated low-grade film. If this is what the rest of my life will be, I thought, there is really no point in living on. Sitting with a sicko getting off on… the years stretched on and on and on, endlessly. And in any case, what WAS there to live for? It's not like anyone was really missing me out there.

So now you want the climax, I guess. What really happened that night, the night of the fire? Did I make him drink a gallon of alcohol and leave the gas on? No, your honour, I plead not guilty! Did I light a cigarette and let the house go up in flames? No, your honour, not guilty. I had quit smoking months ago and he drank the alcohol without any help from me. And I didn't know where the lighter was -- that was the crazy thing, see, because he hadn't been able to find the lighter and lit his cigarette using the gas stove.

By the time I woke up, there may have been no escape for either of us except that something forced me to dash through the blaze and smoke and somehow push open the door. Did I try to wake him up? Try to drag him too? Yes, your honour, I plead guilty to that. Why did I do that and waste precious time? … You weren't there, remember?

Did it take me 10 minutes to crack the password he had locked my phone with? Yes, your honour. It was not his birthday, or his mother's birthday or his father's or his brother's. Ironically, it was my birthday, and I thought of that last. Did I call the fire service? No, your honour, I couldn't remember the number. But I did dial 100 and someone came… but they came too late. It was too late even by the time I had got out.

And did I laugh hysterically when they brought his body out? Yes, your honour, I plead entirely guilty to that! You see, first of all, I suddenly realized that I was free! Tears started pouring down my cheeks at that thought - yes, tears of sheer relief! And then I saw it, the all-but-melted lighter clutched tight in his hand. The asshole had set the house on fire and been too drunk to wake up. The cosmic irony of the thing, your honour, it hit me somewhere in the midriff. That's when I burst out laughing… and couldn't stop…

Wouldn't you have, little shrink?

All right, all right, I will separate the fact from the fiction. There was no fire. But I DID escape. And when the demons gnaw and grind their teeth inside me, a little fiction feels so, so good. Hey, don't be so Protestant about this! What's a little fantasy between friends?

A Sonnet for Sara

Wraith-like in your first moment of truth, you yowled;

as the doc grinned and said, "a baby girl, ma'am. . . Only a woman can yell this loud!"

protesting, doubtless at this violation of your comfortable fortress,

scolding the doc for causing such distress!

And once you found movement, you could never be still,

and when you found speech, your words each silence did fill.

As did your lisped-out perfectly pitched songs;

and soon little fingers found a way to play along.

Twenty years, a lifetime lived in each swinging moment,

from great joy to the deepest angst to torment

a heart that feels too much, imagines the worst

a mind too often plagued and curst

and yet that spirit which belies it all

the quicker you rise after each fall.

One Flew Over

Kindred spirit, battling demons too ferocious

to conquer with élan or wit,

Faces in crowds, the stink of yesterdays,

rise from dungeons of dread and flit.

When paths cross and roads meet,

where destinies are unclear;

peopled with memories of screwed up pasts:

A future confronted with fear.

When life and death become a sometime thing,

stuck in a child's-play video game;

plastic monsters with grotesque faces

plague the twilight of sometime shame --

armed with fake shotguns we shoot them down

but they return again and yet again --

Lend me a hand, o winged friend,

let us banish such forever pain.

Cross the rainbow to the morning star

that shines away the night,

in poetry starkly writ across

the sky in shadows of glorious starlight.

For, the skydiver confessed to real fear

of unopened parachutes as death hovered near

and that moments before the jump

one thought does wisdom lend:

Egos, fights, pettiness are nothing but

a vacuum when faced with the end.

When the Dark Enfolds

For Nayanika, Sahar and Ananya

I remember when the light when out

in the middle of the day

and the hot sun sent chills down my spine.

I remember being too lonely to want a friend

and too sad even to cry.

I remember when the night was less dark than

what filled me inside.

And I remember when the shadows overwhelmed me

enough to want to die.

And yet I remember how there was always that illusive light

waiting somewhere beyond my reach.

When it took every ounce of strength to keep searching

for that passage seemingly leading nowhere.

And somewhere from the great beyond voices called

out to me, unheeded, unacknowledged, undermined

by the deep dark pressing against my forehead.

And yet, someplace buried deep there was still the will,

the hope, the vision of what could be.

If only I could touch its feathery wings and take flight

out of the awesome silence

the stillness of being.

And when the dark enfolded me I found

a place to hide.

Tears, fears and dreadful years were washed

away by the callous tide.

Desultory, disconnected, disenchanted stories

interrupted by flashing migraine lights.

Clinging to straws of hope in the midst

of soul-numbing fights.

The ragged pain of breathing

through broken ribs.

The numbing of arms when your

spine is hit.

But it was no worse than the pain

of being born, drawn out by a vestige

of a chance you take in seizing the moment.

The moment when trapped within those

impenetrable walls, of a mind too destroyed by

its own capacity to self-destruct, you reach for the last straw

And pull yourself out of the abyss

of detached despair.

For, sometimes, just one straw is enough

to craft a set of wings.