With immense loneliness comes tremendous test of willpower.
Should I or should I not call? Just another bowl of ice cream, please. No. No. No. No comfort eating. No drunken nights. Get a hold on yourself. Your world has not collapsed. Just a bit shaken.

Sleepless nights witness a thousand doubts
A thousand whys and a thousand why-nots.
Why do I lie awake night after night?
Put me to bed like before, make everything right.
Just don’t sing me a lullaby.
In the silence of the night, let me cry
Let me sleep a dreamless sleep
On my pillow wet with tears that you and I weep
For, along with the nightmares, it seems
The Dream-Catcher caught all my dreams.

It’s a funny thing being sick. If there is no one around to take care of you, you stop wanting anybody at all. You just go into a pathetic wallowing-in-self-pity cocoon and refuse to admit anyone.
‘I am fine. Leave me alone.’ You stop taking calls. You refuse to go to the doctor. (‘There’s no one to take me to the doctor’, you justify.) You just lie all day in bad, moping. Crying over milk, spilt, retrieved and then burnt.
Yup, it’s a funny thing being sick.
Or maybe it’s just me.

Ten reasons why all ‘Ten Reasons Why..’ should be prohibited

1. There should be only one solid reason for doing or not doing something. For instance, one solid reason why men should wear skirts is that they would be far more comfortable in it. That’s a good enough reason.

2. One solid reason is usually followed by many other reasons. And reasons are seldom just ‘ten’ in number. I mean there could be eleven reasons or thirty-three. Why restrict yourself??!! For instance, in addition to being comfortable there could be many other reasons why men should wear skirts. Like the fact that they would be able to better disguise their state of excitement.

3. Ten is such a boring number. It should be an interesting number like a prime number. For instance, thirteen reasons why men should wear skirts.

4. It is an excuse for bored-nothing-better-to-do people to write silly-relevant-to-none articles. I mean why on earth would any sane person ever be interested in reading ‘Ten reasons why men should wear skirts’ ?

5. People use it to justify their actions. For instance, a man can write on ‘Ten reasons why men should wear skirts’ and make up fancy reasons when the only real reason why he wants to wear a skirt is to shorten the period of undressing before the act of committing the sin of lust (Read: Sex).

6. People should not be allowed to not take risks in life. And ten is such a safe number. It’s safe to give ‘Ten reasons why men should wear skirts’ when actually there are so many more.

7. Ten has the digits 1 and 0 in it. Binary code numbers. Just like in The Matrix. Scarrrrryyyyy! Does anyone want to live in The Matrix even if the men wear skirts in it?

8. There are better things in life to write about. For instance, an article on ‘Men should wear skirts’.

9. There are enough bullet points and numbered facts to go through in the course of our professional lives. For respite one does not want to read neatly bulleted and organized reasons for any action. For instance, a comic strip with men wearing skirts would be so much funnier than a ‘Ten reasons why men should wear skirts’.

10. It certainly would stop me writing such could-do-without-nonsensical-articles.

What shall we use
To fill the empty spaces
Where we used to talk?
How shall I fill
The final places?
How should I complete the wall?

~Empty Spaces, Floyd

I remember this one night, not so long ago. It was late, much beyond Cinderella’s deadline. You and I sat on the beach, making patterns in the sand with our feet. The sea was pitch black, stretching like space into oblivion. Dark, yet not menacing. When all of a sudden we saw a light emerge out of the blackness, an aeroplane in the distance. Just one light in the sky that kept inching closer, an orange light. Hypnotized we sat, watching not just the approaching light but also its reflection in the water. The eerie orange shadow that danced a slow Tango while we sat mesmerized.

When did ‘us’ become a paper boat
That sunk inevitably in the overflowing stream
While you and I stood on the banks helplessly
Knowing that our destiny was inexorably to drown
Will you then for the last time wrap the blanket around me?
As you leave me behind huddled in the cold
Will you let me rest my head once on your shoulders?
And let me weep my final weep?

For the past month, my colleague/ friend is being harassed by her neighbour, a fat, old, unemployed doctor. It started with him ringing their doorbell five-six times a day. He would ring the bell and run back into his own apartment, watching them from behind his door through the peephole. My friend, when she discovered who the miscreant was, immediately complained to the building security guard and her landlady. The landlady gave the old man a warning, saying that the next time he disturbed them they would turn him over to the police.
Last night, in a state of drunken inebriety, he started banging on their door. My friend’s sister, alone in the house, kept praying that he would stop and go back to his house. But he kept standing outside door, muttering incoherent words to himself. After an hour, tired, he went back to his flat, but sat down next to his door with his eyes guarding their flat. The sister called everyone that she could think. The landlady, the building security guard and the other people in the building. No one came to her help. Finally along with a friend, she called the police. The old man was taken to the police station, but nothing more was done. The police said that would not be able to take any action till he physically harmed them. Can you imagine?
Girls in India have to be molested or raped before anyone takes notice!!

Perhaps the fate of man and woman is to come closer together just to make each other feel each others lonelinesses all the deeper.
Was my friend right like always?

The background:
He is the second in command in the agency I work in. (Basically, he’s my boss’ boss’ boss). A week earlier, taking pity on my hardworking soul, he had offered to give me a lift home. Ordinarily a safe (read snail-slow) driver, he missed a red light that evening. The usually cop-bereft crossing had a traffic policeman, who emerged from behind a host of other cars to give him a ticket. His license got confiscated and he had to personally go to the Thana (police station) to collect it the next day.

A week after:
Me: Hey, can you please give me a lift?
He (smiling): No. No. No. You distract me.
Me: But… but…
He: No. No. No. I just cannot concentrate.
Me: But… but…
He: No. No. No. My attention wavers.
Me: But… but…
He: I have decided. I will not take you in my car.

Only when the people around us started laughing out loud did we understand the implication of our exchange.

The traitor blogs her last post.

Tomorrow’s headline:
Head explosion stuns the world

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.
The bomb in her head is ticking away. And within the next hour, this self-employed Kamikaze pilot (airplane-less) shall destroy the office premises she works in.
Kaboom!

My head’s never hurt this bad. Sob sob!

Why do we women spend hours and hours waxing our arms, legs and what-nots? Why do we cry at the sight of an injection syringe and yet clench our fists through the unbearable pain of threading our eyebrows? Why do we let them (them refers to the parlour people) powder our moustaches and endure the stinging pain of upper-lip hair removal, as involuntary tears threaten to sweep away the parlour? And then we go around with a red ring around our mouths looking like orangutans escaped from a zoo.
Oh, the indignity of it all!
I wonder how many of us realize that when we are dead, all the hair grows right back.
All you hairy moustached women rotting in your graves, show us the light!

‘The Last Samurai’ hangover:

The samurai's life was like the cherry blossom's, beautiful and brief. For him, as for the flower, death followed naturally, gloriously.
Ancient Warriors - The Samurai
The Learning Channel (1994)

Had I not known
that I was dead
already
I would have mourned
my loss of life.
Ota Dokan
1432-1486

Instant poetry on chat:

hold on to what u can
till all the good times wan
fade into the history of past
memories are all that last
who cares for anything at all
bruised that u are after ur fall
shaking ur head in gestures sorry
think no more. don’t u worry
for everything that goes wrong
u don't have to wait all that long
soon things will be all right
and the worst will be out of sight
and some things will get lost in the mist
and people will become just names on the list

Man!!! What a pseudo antel (which means 'intellectual' in Bengali) I can be at times. Blame it on the damned mood.

Impulsive deeds
The vagaries of childhood
Whims and hushed up sins
Unthought words
Spoken out loud
The rights that turned wrong
As I altered with time
The same questions
I asked again and again
The same mistakes
I made again and again
The whys and why nots
That punctuate my contrition
But incapacitated and helpless I am
To the ineludible inevitability
For obey I must
The inexplicable inveiglements
Of my soul