I thought you'd never come

"She doesn't like that word." I explain hurriedly to the bewildered man.


She is still standing there, breathing fast, the rage has subsided, giving way to tears. I still remember the first time I saw this happen. The first time I saw those eyes that seemed unaware of the stream flowing out of them, the nothingness in them had struck me as something completely unknown. In that moment, she was never the woman whose soul I had made my own in the village church, whose eyes I had drunk to and then broken the glass.


She is still holding the broken glass in her hand. I take it from her and keep it on the bar. My instinct is to hold her in my arms, but I know she doesn't need that. I hold her hand and take her away. She lets me lead her through the rows of uncomfortable, sarcastic and sympathetic glances like an obedient child. Her eyes are still elsewhere. She is not yet my wife, someone I can hug and stroke on the head and assure that everything will be ok. Even when she is back to being that person though, I can not tell her that with much conviction. Not anymore.


She has been sleeping for hours now. I like it when she sleeps, but it makes me feel guilty. I like her sleeping because it is a relief, because she sleeps for the most part of the day, even though the doctors say it might not be good for her. I don't think she knows it now when she is awake. I mean, I don't know if she is able to differentiate anymore. Sometimes, she picks up a conversation we had when we were young and met surreptitiously amidst the rye in the fields, and she continues it. I treasure that. Although I shouldn't. I am supposed to discourage that. But those are the only moments when I have her back. She looks at me as though she knows me as that boy I once was. I almost want to climb into her dreams and stay there. In the rye field. As two pairs of eyes that laughed and dreamed.


She is awake now, and shivering. The moonlight shines on her bare back. Her thick hair flies slightly in the soft breeze as she looks at something imaginary on the tree outside the window. I touch her spine warily. She turns and looks at me. Her eyes smile a soft smile. I had almost forgotten that soft dimple.


"I thought you'd never come." she says, gleaming.


I smile back. I don't know what she means. Or may be, I do.

Emerald Colored Lake

[I realized this post might appear vague and incomprehensible. I went overboard with my incoherent blabber in this one. :)

So, just to simplify, its a letter written by a girl who has been sent to a mental asylum. The letter is addressed to her elder sister. Hopefully, this knowledge would add more meaning to the post as you read it.]

Dear Aapa,

I am happy. I have finally got wings. I am learning to fly. This morning, I flew across to the mountains through a haze of cold fog that settled between the earth and the sky to dissolve the boundaries between them. I kept flying until my wings slowly melted in the warm morning rays and I landed onto an emerald colored lake, where I fell asleep, because the water was so still.

These days I sleep a lot, and dream a lot. Ammi used to say, dreams are like bubbles. I believed that, until recently, I stretched out my hand and felt a dream.... D-R-E-A-M....and guess what, it wasn't that fragile.

I love my new home. I feel free. I no longer see the world through a window. Here, they let me step out of the door into the garden, and bathe in the sun. Remember how I was scared to laugh because then I always had to cry later on? Here, in the garden, I laugh a lot, because the others join in to laugh and cry in chorus with me, so that the balance of the universe is maintained. Balance between laughing and crying, between loving and hating, between windows and doors; there are many such balances-this is what a friend here tells me. He is wise. Sometimes, I also join in to cry when someone else feels like laughing. You know, its not really that bad to cry.

And yes, thanks for sending my favourite butterfly to me. When she lived in the painting back home, she never flapped her wings. I always wondered why. My wise friend tells me, may be she flapped her wings whenever I flapped my eyelids. So now, I have befriended the butterfly. She doesn't play that trick with me anymore. She seems happy too. Sometimes we play hide and seek. But then she cheats me and flies out of the garden. I am not allowed to go there. So, I get angry and shout at her. The nurses then give me an injection. Its a sting, like the one that occurs when I bite my palm with the corners of exactly two teeth. And then, I get wings again.

The other day, it rained while I slept. And when I woke up, the garden was full of my favourite scent. I tasted a little bit of earth. I felt very happy, very free. Then I went back to sleep. My friends here tell me its because of the medicines. But I think its like a blessing - that I don't need to identify where D-R-E-A-M ends and R-E-A-L-I-T-Y begins.